The Sound of Silence
by Zealous Iconoclast
Summary: Perhaps the relationship was doomed from the start: a marriage between a Dove and an Air Pirate. Or perhaps they were perfect for each other. But a force greater than politics tore them apart in record time. The story of Ruthie Calavicci.
1. Chapter One

Note: Title copyright Simon and Garfunkel.

CHAPTER ONE

He woke up biting back screams. There was a pulsing pain under his left floating ribs and his shoulders were shrieking at him, telling him to say whatever they wanted to hear and to say it right now! Now!

He clutched his side with his right hand, balling his left into a fist and ramming it into his mouth, rocking and trying to calm down. He bit down on his phalanges, the real pain helping to dissipate the spectral agony. He drew thin, panting breaths and tried to stay quiet so he wouldn't wake his wife.

When he had recovered sufficient control to make his limbs obey him he got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Locking the door so that he wouldn't be interrupted—she had done that before—he climbed into the tub in the dark. His groping hand found the cold water faucet, and he turned it on full force. He popped the lever that diverted to the shower, and with a bang inside the wall the water changed its course and the deluge washed over him from above, pounding on his head and running over his face and down his chest and back. The chill of the water numbed him and made his shoulders twitch. It felt good. He started to shiver and he sat down in the tub, wrapping his arms around his knees. He tilted his head upwards, filling his mouth from the stream of cool water from above. He sloshed it around and spit. The next time he swallowed, then he turned his face so that the thin jets of water pelted his eyelids.

His teeth began to chatter and he turned off the water. He lay back in the empty bathtub, draping his arm over the side. The water started to evaporate off of his skin and the shaking grew in intensity. It felt good, anchoring him as it did firmly in reality, in the present. When he was younger he had hated the cold with a vengeance, having spent too many ill-clad winters in New York. But that was before he had known how horrible it could be to be hot, day after day and night after night as the months turned to years. To sweat until you couldn't feel the heat because you were delirious with it, to fight the pain of breathing air warmer than blood, to try to hide your aching eyes from a sun that cooked the skin like a piece of grilled fish. There were times when a man needed to be cold, and this was one of those times.

When his body was dry and the shivering had died to the occasional ecstatic paroxysm he got out of the tub and fumbled for the light switch. His satin smoking jacket was hanging on the back of the door, and he wrapped it around himself, cinching the sash around his middle. He looked at himself in the mirror. Forty-five and still a good-looking stud. He ruffled his hair, which had gone curly from the wetting. His hand moved unconsciously to his chest where the smoking jacket formed a V of flesh. His finger traced a jagged white line standing out against his cold-reddened skin, caressing it nostalgically. It was his favorite scar, and he had so many to choose from.

He grinned. Nineteen fifty-one. High school diploma in hand, free at last, newly seventeen, his own master. He divided his time between the upper Manhattan night life, excursions out to Long Island on his newly acquired motorcycle (second-hand but still the fastest thing he had ever ridden) and rehersals. He was Young Siward in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Macbeth. He'd just had a fight with Dorcas, the doll who played Lady Macduff—could _she_ ever do Damsel in Distress! She'd caught him kissing Hecate (that girl was magic, even in the makeup) between scenes. So Dorcas had snuck the tip off of Macbeth's foil, and the death-thrust that was supposed to be an illusion had ripped right through his costume and sliced a zigzag line from his breastbone to his shoulder. The director had been furious, the star had been sick with contrition. Siward himself had required four stitches and got an extra twenty bucks out of the debacle.

His wandering hand found another mark below that one, a thick, puckered ridge. His smile dissolved. If you split a shaft of green bamboo lengthwise at just the right angle, you got an edge like a knife, except that it still retained all of the snap and flexibility of bamboo. And if you hit a bound man with it it hurt him like hell.

He needed a cigar, he decided, and he needed a drink. He switched off the light and found his way through the dark to the kitchen. Here the streetlamps filtered their light through the lace curtains and internal illumination was unnecessary. There was a box of cigars in the china cabinet, next to the menorah. He too out one long, thick cylinder and unwrapped it. Usually he did so lovingly, the way one would undress a beautiful woman, but tonight he needed the smoke, not merely wanted it. He bit off one end and spit it into the sink, then lit a match and drew the first quick, sharp puffs. When the tobacco caught he shook the match out and filled his mouth with the fragrant smoke. Another little pleasure keeping him in the moment.

He went to the liquor cabinet and took out a decanter of golden whiskey. The tumblers were in the next cupboard. Even when he was bent on drinking a bottle dry he used a glass.

He took another long drag on the cigar, exhaling voluminously. Sitting at the table, he poured a tumblerful of whiskey and took a swallow. The potent liquor burned its way down his esophagus and warm him from the inside out. He swung his right leg so that his bare foot hissed against the cool linoleum. He alternated between the glass and the cigar, filling the former whenever it got too empty. The cuckoo clock in the sitting room sounded off three a.m. He smoked the cigar down to a stub, snuffed it in the ceramic ashtray next to the vase of daisies, and poured one more half-tumbler of liquor, draining it with a grimace. He got to his feet, stumbling unsteadily to the cabinet. He put the almost-empty decanter back in the cupboard, set the tumbler in the sink and started back towards the bedroom.

His wife was lying where he had left her. He took off his smoking jacket, draped it carefully over the chair of her vanity, and climbed into bed beside her. She stirred a little as his cold feet brushed her warm ankle, but she didn't wake up. She had been sleeping much heavier than usual lately. Time was she'd wake up if he sneezed, never mind getting out of bed; now she hardly even moved. Too bad. The alcohol was doing its work and he could have done with a bit of bingo-bango-bongo. But she was asleep, so he buried his head in the pillow instead and slipped into a drunken sleep.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two:

The sun pouring through the bedroom window woke Captain Albert Calavicci from the kind of sleep the nightmares could never reach through. His head was throbbing a little, but he wasn't really hung over. Just a little hair of the dog and he'd be fine. That would steady his fingers, too.

He rolled his legs out of bed and sat up, scrubbing his eyes with the balls of his hands. He must've hade a dream last night, because he didn't remember drinking before going to bed with Ruthie. The clock told him it was nine thirty-five. He grunted softly as he remembered it was Saturday. Not being expected at base was a good thing, but on the other hand this wasn't just any Saturday.

He got up and started picking out his clothes. Socks, underwear, some dark green pants and a blue shirt with short sleeves. He was going to wind up in a suit later, so he decided against a tie. He dressed, then put on his favorite blue shoes, the ones Ruthie hated. Oh, well. She was going to have her say about his wardrobe this afternoon, so it was only fair he got to express himself now.

Ruthie was in the kitchen, flying around like a tornado, piling things on the table. The eight dozen buns she had spent all of yesterday baking, a fruit salad, a potato salad, an enormous jar of pickles, a platter of devilled eggs, a tray of knishes, and a container full of apple pastries. She was taking a loaf of glazed, braided loaf of bread out of the refrigerator. He put a hand on each of her hips and kissed her smooth neck just below her coiled knot of black hair.

"Good morning, beautiful," he murmured seductively.

She shrugged him off and pushed past to set the bread on the table. "About time you got out of bed," she said crossly. "Or have you forgotten you promised we would leave by ten?"

"An officer's word is his bond, dearest. Of course I didn't forget!" he fibbed. "Just let me grab a little something to eat and we'll load up this feast. Aren't your sisters doing any of the cooking?"

She scoffed and started draping clean tea towels over the baskets of buns. He took out a tumbler and opened the liquor cabinet.

"Isn't it a little early for that?" Ruthie asked coldly.

"I've got a craving. You want me to wear the brown suit or the black suit tonight?" He poured out a dollop of whiskey and put away the decanter.

"I'm not letting you drive me when you're drunk," she said. "And I've got your black suit packed already."

"Drunk?" he said indignantly, brandishing his glass. "I've got maybe and ounce here. _Maybe_."

"Well, don't you take a second helping!" she snapped.

He drank the golden liquid in one go, and his headache began to dissipate. Ruthie took off her apron and smoothed the front of her dress. "You were up again last night," she said after a silence.

Al was instantly on his guard. "You slept through last night."

"Yes, I did," she said tersely. "And I woke up this morning next to a man who smelled like a drunk pirate, and I went into the bathroom to find water on my nice clean floor where _somebody_ forgot to close the shower curtain!"

"I'm sorry, I forgot," he said. Ruthie was an amazing housekeeper. She couldn't abide dirt or disorder. Even when she was down in the dumps, the littlest inkling of a mess set her off like a firecracker. "I'll close it next time."

"Next time? You're going to do this again? Wake up in the middle of the night and go and take a shower and start drinking?" she demanded, hands on her curvy hips.

"Aw, Ruthie, I didn't have much."

"Four and a half inches," she said. "And now you want more, first thing in the morning?"

"You measured the bottle?" Al said incredulously.

"Yes, I did," Ruthie confirmed curtly. "And I want to know what it is that wakes you up in the middle of the night thinking you have to shower and drive you to drink!"

"Drop it, Ruthie. It was nothing." He went to the fridge and poured orange juice into the empty whiskey tumbler, then rummaged in the breadbox for an almond Danish.

"It isn't the first time this has happened either, is it?" she said. "How many times have you done this, just since we've been married?"

"Well, it can't be more than ninety-one times, can it?" Al quipped, trying to lighten the mood with a wisecrack.

It didn't work. She came at him, brandishing her index finger and looking uncannily like her mother. "Don't you be fresh with me, Albert Calavicci!" she said fiercely. "Something is going on, and I want to know what!"

He took a mouthful of pastry so he wouldn't have to respond.

"Tell me what's going on!" she exclaimed.

"Ruthie, can we not do this now?" he asked. He couldn't talk to her about this stuff. Poor kid, she shouldn't have to deal with this kind of crap.

"No!" she cried. He tried to evade her but she seized two fistfuls of fabric from the front of his shirt and shook him. "I need to know, Al, I need to know!" she shouted with bizarre desperation.

He wrapped a hand around each of her wrists and kissed her forehead. "No, you don't," he said softly. "Now come on, or your mother will think we're letting newlywed hanky-panky get in the way of family duty."

She looked at him helplessly. "You know _my _secret," she whispered, suddenly vulnerable.

He kissed her again. "Yes, and it's a good think I do, darling, or I would never be able to be patient with you," he told her fondly, teasing. She was a sweet little trick, when she wasn't flying off the handle.

"_Patient? You?_" Obviously today was one of those off-the-handle days. Ruthie could swing back and forth faster than anybody he had ever met. "You are the most _impatient_ man I've ever met! Not to mention conceited and demanding and arrogant and lecherous and crude!"

"You left out handsome and witty and intelligent and talented and charming and suave," he said. Shouting back only made her angrier, and he didn't want a fight right now.

"Ooh, and _modest_!" she snapped. "I don't know why I married you!"

Now _there _was an ideal set-up. "I do," Al said, grabbing her around the waist and kissing her. She fought at first, but then became involved in the embrace. Her hands worked up and down his back. He was tempted to bring her into the bedroom, but resisted, knowing that there was something she liked better than that. A man who was interested in her family.

"Now let's get this food out to Mother's," he said as their lips parted. "I know you'll want time to visit with the girls before it's time to head to the synagogue."

She forced a small smile and smoothed her hair, looking everywhere but into his eyes.


	3. Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE 

Ruthie was a manic-depressive. That was her secret, her dark and terrible secret. She had lived alone with it all through high school, she had struggled with it in her first two years of college. Even now nobody knew. Nobody but her doctor and her psychiatrist and her husband. She'd told him on the last night of their honeymoon. They had been sipping champagne over the moonlit torrents of Niagara Falls. She had been terrified of what he would say, but she felt she had to tell him. Everything had been so perfect, he had been so careful and considerate and made everything perfect.

Even though he was a Catholic he had agreed to a Jewish wedding, just to please her family. He hadn't even suggested a priest bless the union afterwards, which she'd always been told was the minimum a Catholic man demanded. And he had agreed to the honeymoon to the Falls, just to please her. He hadn't wanted it for some reason, he'd tried and tried to suggest other locales, from San Francisco to Pensacola to London. But she had had her heart set on Niagara Falls, and in the end he'd agreed. All that week he had waited on her hand and foot, he was so caring and loving. She had to tell him. After all, he was her husband. He had a right to know she was crazy.

The words had tripped out, stumbling over each other. She had looked desperately into his brown eyes, terrified that she would see consternation and rejection in them. But all he had said was "So was Edison," and carried her off the balcony and back to bed. It was just another gesture in a never-ending string that had defined their love-holiday and made her feel like he really loved her, like she was the most important person in the world. But when they'd come back to the bungalow in New Jersey, that had changed.

He wasn't a dashing romantic ideal, he was a human being. Some days he came home from the base tired and discouraged, grousing about his superiors or criticizing his subordinates. The cigars that had seemed so debonair and exotic were overpowering. They left heaps of grey in her nice, clean ashtrays and they dulled the scent of her own cigarettes. Scars that had seemed faint and roguish in the rosy glow of a luxurious hotel suite were harsh and frightening under the incandescent bulbs in their bedroom. She wouldn't have minded the hideous, pale puckerings across his back and chest and arms and legs, if only he would have taken the time to explain what had happened. He looked like he had been in some kind of terrible plane crash or something, but he wouldn't ever tell that story. And although he had never yet drunk himself into oblivion or become violent or even so much as angry in his cups he went through too much liquor.

The novelty of the marriage-bed, at least, had yet to wear off. Twenty-nine and still a virgin on her wedding night she had had no idea what to expect or to do. She had sat on the edge of the bunk on the Niagara Falls train in her cream-colored silk lingerie, nervous and uneasy. Then he'd come out of the bathroom freshly shaven and smiling, and begun his gentle instruction, calming her anxiety with gentle caresses and well-chosen words. She knew he had had women before her, lots of them, but right then she'd felt like the only one in the world. At home, too, the happiest times were when they made love. He was so… she blushed a little at the thought, maidenhood's habits dying hard. But when they were done and they fell asleep sleep it was another matter.

The midnight awakenings frightened her. His dreams were always vivid and often vocal, which made him a peculiar bedfellow. Sometimes he would sing, his gravely voice not quite able to keep the tune of _Volare_. She didn't mind that: it was an endearing little quirk, and a reminder of his romantic Italian side. The song would wake her, but it would also lull her back to sleep, cuddled against him. But sometimes he would recite the Catholic wedding vows, always getting to one point and repeating the phrase again and again like a warped record; "Till death do us part. Till death do us part. Till death do us part. Till death…" Or he would sigh and murmur wistfully, "Beth, oh, Beth, Beth, Beth…" until it made Ruthie want to scream. She had no idea who Beth was: a childhood sweetheart, a passing fancy, maybe one of his ex-wives. He'd had a couple of failed marriages, she knew, though he never went into specifics. And there was a picture he kept in his side-table drawer, an old photograph of a man with two children. One of them was Al, little and thin as a clothes-rail with a luxurious crop of dark, curly hair. The other was a little girl, younger than Al, with a soft, round Down's Syndrome face. Ruthie thought she was his sister: she certainly looked enough like him, if one could get past the characteristics of her condition. Maybe she was Beth. Ruthie just didn't know, and she was afraid to ask. If people didn't want to talk about things, they just didn't want to talk about them, and she wished to God that the rest of the world understood that.

There were other things he said in his sleep, too, things that Ruthie didn't want to think about. She had talked to Doctor Tamblyn about them. He had clicked his tongue and said her new husband had obviously been through some kind of trauma. He had suggested she try to get him to talk, to her or to a therapist. In the meantime he had told her it was better for her own mental health if she didn't listen to his nocturnal ramblings. So he had given her Phenobarbital to add to her evening lithium, and she had been taking it for almost three weeks now, sleeping right through whatever went on next to her.

This wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it wasn't really Al at all. It was just… Al.

He was buoyant and charming almost all the time, even in the privacy of the bungalow, and _that_ was the problem. His vivacious attitude and his devil-may-care approach to life were part of his appeal, but on her low days he was very tiring. He didn't seem to understand her need to mope around the house, or to cocoon herself in blankets and sit on the sofa, silent and motionless for hours, any more than he understood her need at other times to scrub the house spotless and cook more food than two people could ever eat. He didn't understand. He thought that all pain could be laughed away. He thought disco was a sure-fire antidote for melancholy.

Such a bright, pleasure-driven spirit had no understanding of the pain of having a hole inside of you, a black hole of emptiness that sucked in light and joy and left only misery. He just didn't know what it was like to wish you were brave enough to kill yourself. He had never stood in the kitchen at two o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, clutching the meat cleaver and wishing you had the courage to saw your veins open, wishing you were heroic enough to do what was right for yourself instead of what was right for your parents and your siblings and your dozens of cousins and nieces and nephews and your eternally vivacious husband.

Just like everybody else, he didn't understand and she could never explain. She was afraid to tell him, terrified, because she knew that whatever his attitude in theory, he wouldn't understand the actuality of her condition. Her mind wasn't right, it never had been, not as long as she could remember. And if he knew about it… maybe he would even have her committed, the way she knew her parents would, if he ever found out about the depths of her black thoughts.

She had been so even for so long, ever since her fourth semester in English at New Jersey State when she had been started on the lithium, that this recent downward spiral was frightening. She finally had everything she wanted: a house of her own, freedom, a husband who wasn't perfect but who was still a lot better than most. It couldn't be long, the rate they were going, before she had a baby. So she should be happy, right? But she wasn't. Just like those early days at university, she just wasn't happy.

She looked at Al out of the corner of her eye. There he sat, navigating his car—a sleek '79 Corvette—through the streets of Lakehurst and out onto Route 537, bound for Trenton, talking animatedly about his trainees' most recent antics as if the altercation back at the house hadn't even happened. It had left a black mark on her soul that wasn't going to fade any time soon, and he had forgotten about it already. She had married the wrong person. They had nothing in common, and their outlooks were too different. She could never be happy like him, and he had never been miserable like her. They were incompatible, that was all there was to it. Completely incompatible.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

"—and then he slides right over the wing!" Al exclaimed. The outskirts of Trenton were rising around them. "Used to try the same trick myself, never could get the hang of it. I'm gonna miss teaching those kids to fly."  
Ruthie was startled out of her grim thoughts with those words. "What do you mean, miss it? Have they reassigned you?"

"Maybe," he said cheerfully. "I've been invited to participate in a top-secret research project through the Pentagon. They're looking for a high-ranking Naval flight officer with a background in the sciences and some knowledge of computers, I seem to fit the bill."

Her eyes narrowed. "What kind of project?" she asked.

"That's classified," he said with one of his infuriatingly happy smiles. "It's research. Physics, which isn't really my area, it's never been more than a hobby, but like I said they need a computer guy."

"Why a Naval officer?" Ruthie pressed warily.

"Dez MacArthur is the project administrator," Al explained. "Admiral MacArther, you met him at that dinner last month. He was in my squadron when we shipped out in '64, a lieutenant commander back then. He got the Purple Heart for valor in combat. He's done pretty well for himself since the war ended, too."

Ruthie shuddered. She hated it when he talked about the war. Her brother Aaron was hiding in Canada. He couldn't come home because he had dodged the draft to keep from being sent over there to bomb poor villages and drop napalm on children. It made her sick to think that her husband had been in Vietnam doing those sorts of horrible things. It hadn't come up until after the wedding; the night after the dinner party he had just alluded to, in fact. Too many tactful comments from other officers had bred suspicion in Ruthie's mind and when she had confronted him with a hostile "Albert_, did you fight in Vietnam?_" he had hardly been able to deny it. She had erupted, shouting about Aaron and her horror that he hadn't even bothered to tell her about this chunk of his life, a whole decade he had completely neglected to mention!

Al was still talking. "Seems Admiral Kelley told him about my degree, and he was wondering if I'd like to come down and take a look at the facilities next weekend. They're a little behind schedule, but they hope to start testing at the end of the summer. Project code name is Starbright, they're based out of Arizona. This is just what I'm hoping for, exactly why I went back to school. I'll have a chance to apply some of that science that's been rattling around in my brain for twenty years, and I'll still have a position of military importance."

"What do you mean, military importance?" Ruthie demanded. As it always did, the reminder of the not-so-distant horrors her country had perpetrated in Vietnam made her skittish.

"Oh, you know," he said evasively. "Save time, save money, save lives."

"American lives?" she challenged. It hadn't been so long since the peace marches and the protest rallies. The rhetoric was still old habit.

"Sure, of course. American lives, Canadian, I don't know who. Just imagine if air ambulance wasn't the fastest way to get an injured person to a hospital. Imagine if it didn't take four days to get to the moon." He apparently decided he had said enough, because he cleared his throat and changed the tangent of the conversation. "Of course, if this all pans out we're going to have to move to Arizona on pretty short notice."

Ruthie stared at him. "Arizona?" she echoed. "I can't move to Arizona!" She was furious that he would just spring something like this on her: didn't he care about her thoughts or her feelings at all? He was just like everybody else!

"Calm down, honey," Al said, turning into her parents' street. "When I asked you to marry me I warned you that I get moved around a lot, That's part of being in the military."

"But you're Navy!" she exclaimed.

He frowned a little, puzzled. "What does that have to do with anything?" he asked, switching off the engine and pulling the handbrake.

"Navy!" she repeated. She wanted to scream or burst into tears. She hated it when little things set her off like this: it made her feel helpless and out of control, like a little child throwing a tantrum. But she couldn't help it, and anyway, moving to Arizona wasn't a little thing. "Navy, sailors, boats! I thought you'd only be assigned to cities on the coasts. You know, Annapolis, Charleston, San Diego, places where there's water! Not the Arizona desert!"

"Ruthie, settle down," he said, taking her shoulders in her hands and looking her in the eyes. "Just settle down, honey. Nothing is set in stone, we can talk about it. We don't have to take this assignment if you really don't want to. Just calm down, okay?"

"You could have told me!" she snapped, not ready to give up the fight. "Before you started talking to admirals and making promises and—"

"I haven't made any promises," Al said firmly. "I wouldn't do that, not without talking it through with you. I told Mac and Kelley both, I'm not a single guy any more, who can just run around doing whatever Uncle Sam wants him to do. I told 'em I've got a wife now, and there're two heads thinking for the Calavicci household. All we've been doing is talking it over." An enthusiastic gleam lit in his eyes and he continued eagerly. "Mac's been running the science by me. I'm no quantum physicist, but I tell you, it sounds like they're really onto something! This could actually work: they could really make it happen!"

"Make _what_ happen?" Ruthie said in exasperation.

He wrinkled his nose a little and pecked her on the cheek, unfastening his seat belt. "Let's get into the house, huh?" he said, opening his door and climbing out.


	5. Chapter Five

**CHAPTER FIVE**

Isaac Zelnik had come to America in 1945, after years of terror and unbelievable sorrow in war-torn Europe. He had come with no money, and only a rudimentary knowledge of English to help him carve out a knew life for himself in this strange land. But he had his trade. His family had been undertakers and morticians in Poland for generations. Almost two hundred years their practice in Krakow had flourished, until the Nazis had come, confiscating property and driving the Jews into the ghettos. But wherever you go there are people in need of the final dignities, and Isaac was a master of his craft. It had not been difficult, after the impossibilities of surviving the concentration camps, to find an undertaker willing to take him on as an assistant. That undertaker had children: two sons and six daughters. The third daughter was named Miriam. Isaac had quickly fallen in love, and she had reciprocated. Soon they were married. Delighted to have a son-in-law interested in continuing his business Miriam's father had left the funeral parlor in Isaac's hands and retired. It was a thriving business, the busiest one of its kind in Trenton.

Isaac and Miriam had five children. Naomi, the eldest, was married to a lawyer. Next was Dina, whose husband worked at a local radio station, then Ruthie. Then there was Aaron, the only boy, now in exile because he had refused to murder on command. The youngest was Rachel. She was married too. Her husband was an endocrinologist with Capital Health. All of them lived in Trenton, with an assortment of aunts, uncles and cousins. All of them except Ruthie, who had married a Gentile pilot and lived on an air base, and Aaron, who none of them were ever likely to see again.

All of Ruthie's sisters had children. Rachel's little daughter Miranda was almost three, and she would be a big sister before the summer came. Dina had a girl named Angelica, who was six, and twin boys, Nathan and Reuben, nine years old. Naomi had six: a new baby named Sarah, who had been born right after Ruthie's wedding; Joshua, who was two; six-year-old Mary; eight-year-old Leah; Ester, who had just passed her eleventh birthday; and David, who was celebrating his Bar Mitzvah today.

All of these people were gathered at the Zelnik house, preparing for the event. Also assembled were Miriam's parents, four of her sisters and her eldest brother, with their spouses, several of their children and quite a few grandchildren. It was an enormous family, and had been in the country for ninety years. When Al and Ruthie arrived, they brought the count up to fifty-five people, excluding Rachel's unborn child.

The handsome two-story house was packed to capacity. Al endured the brief and noisy crush at the door, worming his way through to the kitchen where he could deposit his load of baking. The mountains of food covering every available surface made him shake his head in amazement. He had never experienced the abundance that was supposed to mark Italian tables, but he had a feeling that these Poles who traced their ancestry back to Israel had the Romans beat. He somehow assimilated his load into the rest and tried to make his way back through the bustling women and the little girls, and back onto the front lawn, where David, Nathan, Reuben, their friends, and such of their second cousins as were male and of an age to be interested were clustered around the Corvette.

"Hey!" he called happily, trotting towards the boys. He loved kids, and Ruthie's young relations were especially endearing. He didn't know if they had better manners than Gentiles, or if kids from Jersey were just nicer than kids from New York, but they weren't much like the sullen, tough, bullying children he remembered from his own formative years.

The boys backed off as he approached, but David stood forward to face the consequences. "We weren't gonna hurt it, Uncle Al," he said shyly. "We were just looking."

Al clapped the boy's shoulder with his hand. "You go ahead and look all you like," he said. "If your mother says its okay Ruthie can go in your car and you can ride to the synagogue with me."

"Really?" David asked.

"Sure," Al said, enjoying the grin that spread across David's face.

"What about us?" Reuben asked. Nathan nodded vehemently.

"I've only got seat belts for two," Al said. "But if your mother doesn't mind I'll take you each for a little spin later."

The other boys came back towards the vehicle, jostling and laughing. Al moved around to the open trunk. "Let's see," he said. "Could I get a couple of helpers?"

Two boys whom he thought belonged to Ruthie's cousin Martha sprung forward. Al started loading their eager arms with the rest of the food they had brought. "Just take these inside and give them to the ladies," he said. They took off eagerly.

Some of the boys where whispering in a knot a little ways away. Al glanced curiously at them as he shut the trunk. One of them ventured forward.

"David said you're an astronaut," he said, in a tone that made it plain that he didn't quite believe David. "Is that true?"

"As a matter of fact it is," Al said, saluting crisply. "Captain Albert Calavicci at your service."

An impressed murmur moved through the crowd, and David squared his shoulders proudly. "I told them how you flew a space ship all the way to the moon," he said. "But I bet they'd like it better the way you tell it."

"Yes, tell it, Uncle Al, tell it!" Nathan cheered.

Al grinned. "I'll tell you what," he said. "I've got to go and see if they need any help in the house, but at the party after the service I'll answer any questions you guys have. Okay?"

"Deal!" one of the boys said. Then they went back to enthusing over the car and Al returned to the crowded house.

Ruthie had an apron on and was already at work with her sisters and her cousins, dressing gefilter fish and making salads and scraping vegetables. Al tried to squeeze into the crowded kitchen, but with seventeen women bustling around there wasn't much room.

"What are you doing in here?" a powerful contralto voice demanded. Al turned to face his mother-in-law.

She was still a stunningly beautiful woman, tall and statuesque. Her silver hair was dressed just the same way Ruthie's was. She was carrying a pile of white linen tablecloths.

"Ma!" Al said, grabbing her shoulders and kissing her cheek. "How are you?"

"Fine, never been better" she said. "What are you doing in here?"

"Came to see if you ladies needed help with anything," he replied brightly. He liked her. She was strong-willed, big-hearted and forthright. Ruthie was so lucky to have a mother like her. Everyone should have a mother like her.

"Help?" Miriam exclaimed. "Help, he says! When I've got more girls in here than there are fish in the river! No, no, Albert, you get out of the way. Go and sit in the back yard with the men. I think they are all done setting up the tables. I'm going to bring out some cold lunch soon, we have to be up at the synagogue by one."

"You're sure there isn't something I can help with?" Al asked.

Miriam smiled. Even though he was a Gentile, the first one to marry into her family, he was such a good young man, eager to help, charming, attentive to the children. Ruthie was as lucky in love as she had been in every other way. Her heart swelled with motherly pride as she watched the man move off towards the patio doors. She knew the Calaviccis were an affectionate couple, you just had to watch the way they held hands or leaned in against each other on the sofa. There would be more grandchildren to add to her brood soon. She was glad. Ruthie was a strange one, not much like her sisters, and a baby was just what she needed. It had always been what she needed, but she had been so interested in college, and then in her work at the publishing house. Now she wasn't working, she was building a home, even if it was on a Naval air base, and she was going to start a family. And all thanks to that magnetic Italian. So it didn't matter that he was a Gentile. He was making Ruthie happy.


	6. Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

The kitchen was a hive of activity. Ruthie dodged around Rachel's big belly and rummaged in the spice rack. The other girls were chattering happily, from Martha, who was forty-four and thus senior among the young women, to Adelaide, who was nineteen and had been married less time than Ruthie—six weeks. Her wedding had been the last major family event.

Ruthie caught sight of Al through the kitchen window, moving towards the crowd of men clustered around the foot of one of the four long trestle tables that had been set up. His brothers-in-law got up to greet him, clapping him on the back. He said something and the men all laughed, everyone but Ruthie's father and grandfather, who were sitting on lawn chairs some distance away from the others. No doubt what they were talking about. They never talked anything but shop with each other, and seldom enough with other people.

Al was sitting with the other men, now, talking with energetic gesticulation. Dina's husband poured him a glass of lemonade. It wasn't the beverage of choice, for Al or for any of them, but if Miriam caught them consuming alcohol before the Bar Mitzvah there would be dire consequences.

As she watched Ruthie felt a twinge of envy. Al had fit so quickly into her family. Everyone liked him, even her mother who had taken the better part of a year to accept Naomi's Michael as part of the family. Maybe her father wasn't quite reconciled to the fact that she had married a Gentile, but everyone else thought Al could do no wrong. That stunt he had pulled a minute ago with her mother had won him more Brownie points than Ruthie could earn in a month of actually helping with the housekeeping. It wasn't fair that he fit in so perfectly when she couldn't even think the same way all these people did.

Jealously was instantly replaced with the contrition that came with the low times. Of course they liked Al better than her. He was normal, he was charming, he was always cheerful. Who wouldn't prefer him to an eternally unpredictable wet blanket like herself?

"Why so quiet?" Naomi asked, dicing cheese for a garden salad. "Last time all you could do was talk."

Ruthie frowned. The last time she had seen her sister she had just come from a session with Doctor Tamblyn, with her new prescription in her purse and the conviction that everything was going to be perfect now that Al wouldn't be waking her up in the middle of the night with his noises.

"I'm tired," she lied.

"That's all?" Naomi asked. She wasn't going to be so easy to put off. Ruthie had always sort of wondered if her older sister could see right through her. Her next words confirmed it. "Is it man troubles?"

Ruthie stared. "How'd you—"

Naomi pressed two fingers to her lips. "Come downstairs and help me bring up more onions," she said. "David loves onions in his stuffing."

She closed her hand around Ruthie's wrist and drew her past the other women and towards the basement door. Not until they had passed through the rumpus room, through the laundry room and into the cold room with its shelves full of preserves and its boxes of root vegetables did Naomi speak.

"Now, Ruthie, honey, what's wrong?" she asked.

"I don't really want to talk about it, Nai," Ruthie said.

Naomi took her by the shoulders. "Yes, you do," she said.

"No, I don't," Ruthie reiterated.

"Fine," Naomi said stubbornly. "But _I _want you to, and I'm not letting you out of here until you do. What's wrong with your husband?"

"Nothing."

"Don't be stupid, there's something wrong with everybody's husband. Now tell me what, specifically, is wrong with yours."

Ruthie shook her head mutely.

"Well, does he hit you?" Naomi asked.

"No!" Ruthie exclaimed, scandalized that her sister could even think such a thing.

Naomi was not even remotely apologetic. "You never can tell with those army types. Look at Lucy. Chester was an Air Force pilot. Why do you think they broke up? Because he got sick of her falling down the stairs all the time?"

"Al's not an Air Force pilot, he's Navy."

For the second time today, someone looked at her blankly and said, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Nothing, I guess…" Ruthie faltered. "But he doesn't hit me. We just fight a lot. We had a fight this morning."

"About what?" Naomi pressed.

"Just…things." Ruthie lapsed into a morose silence, not wanting to admit that she was married to a man who got up in the middle of the night and made a beeline for the liquor cabinet. "I can't believe we're fighting already," she said at last, her voice small and timid.

Naomi considered her sister's face. They had fought like territorial cats when they were kids, but they had also shared a bedroom, and she couldn't forget Ruthie's ninth grade year, when she had woke up crying almost every night. She had refused to talk about it, and Naomi had let her get away with it then, figuring it was probably just teenage heartbreak or teacher trouble. But this was different. Now her little sister was married to a soldier, and that could be a very dangerous situation.

"Does he yell?" she asked.

"What?" Ruthie mumbled absently.

"When you fight.. Does he yell?"

Ruthie colored ashamedly. "Not as much as I do," she said.

That made Naomi feel a little better. She did some quick mental arithmetic. "Your three-month anniversary is coming up, isn't it?" she asked.

Ruthie nodded. "Monday," she said flatly.

Naomi sighed sympathetically. "By the time mine rolled around the honeymoon was definitely over," she said. "I thought I knew Mike, but turns out he was a slob around the house, anal as anything at the office, but at home? _Oi veh_! He'd leave his clothes on the floor, dirty dishes everywhere, he wouldn't wipe his feet—it drove me crazy! We fought about it every night for months! But we got through it. You've just got to hang in there."

"I don't know," Ruthie sighed. It felt good to be unburdening her troubled mind on someone, especially since she could probably trust Nai. "I think maybe I've made a terrible mistake."

"Why, Ruthie?" Naomi asked gently.

"We're… too _different_!"

"You can't be that different, or you never would have even spoken to him in the first place," Naomi said.

Ruthie wanted to scream. Everybody thought she was so shy and retiring. They didn't understand that that wasn't always the case. There was another Ruth Zelnik, the polar opposite of the one who could stare out a rain-soaked window for hours, her cheeks as wet as the glass. She couldn't tell her sister that, but she had to try and explain, somehow.

"That's the thing, I wasn't myself when I met him," she said. The memories flooded back. She had been even for so long, almost nine years! She didn't need the meds any more! She was cured! But as soon as she stopped taking her tablets she started to swing up…

"What do you mean?" Naomi asked.

"I told you I met him in a discotheque…"

"Yes, you did," Nai confirmed, the corner of her mouth twitching with amusement.

"It was Christmas night," Ruthie said hastily, speeding through the story before reason could shut her down. She had to talk to somebody, and God knew she couldn't talk to her parents or her husband, and she didn't have any friends she could trust. "I went to New York City, took the train. I was all dressed up in—well, if Papa had seen what I was wearing he would have spanked me, pushing thirty or not. I just… I wasn't myself, I wasn't acting the way I usually do, you know? Have you ever been to a disco on a holiday?"

Naomi snickered a little. "I have never darkened the doors of a disco in my life."

"Well, they're horrible places on holidays. All the people are lonely and depressed and trying to hide it," Ruthie said. "They're all pretending to have a good time because they're too scared to just be miserable, and everybody just lets them do it, because they're all in the same boat."

"And you weren't?"

"No! I'd had a great holiday, and I was in a terrific mood. I was on top of the world and I wanted to have fun, I liked discos when I was in college. And I went in there and it's full of people lying to themselves. But there was Al." She couldn't help a small, nostalgic smile. "He was wearing an _awful_ polyester suit, and he was dancing. I've never seen anybody dance like that, I don't know if he was the worst I'd ever seen, or the best…but he was having fun, Nai, really having fun! It wasn't a lie, he was having a great time, and that's what I wanted, so I started dancing with him."

She sighed. Naomi was watching her pensively, but she didn't speak. The silence drove Ruthie to go on. "He was charming and funny, he told me things I'd never heard before. He bought me a martini, and we danced and we danced. He told me about outer space, that he'd been an astronaut, and I guess that's why he looked so familiar, from all the press that mission got. The crowd was getting drunker and sadder, but we were having fun, and he suggested, why don't we get some food? I told him it's Christmas and there wasn't going to be any place open, but he said how did I like Chinese…we went to this little restaurant, it was just us. We ate, and then all of a sudden we were up in his hotel room, and we were on the bed, kissing, and—'

Naomi couldn't hold her silence through that. "Ruthie, you _didn't_!" she cried.

Ruthie felt a wave of indignation. So what if she did? What century were they living in? But she couldn't lie to her sister. "Almost," she said. "But when he started to undo my zipper I came to my senses. I told him I didn't want to. He asked why. I told him. Then he grinned and said he respected that. Didn't understand it, he said, but he respected it. And he kissed me one more time and asked if I wanted him to take me home. And he did, he drove me right to my apartment. Then he asked would I mind having dinner with him sometime, and I said I didn't, and that was that."

She exhaled enormously. "So you see, Nai? It just _happened_. One minute I'm just having a good time dancing to the Beejees, then all of a sudden I'm on a train to Niagara Falls! I've only known him for five months, and we've got nothing in common, nothing at all!"

"It can't be that bad," Naomi reasoned. "Is he cheating on you?"

"_What_?" Ruthie cried.

"Cheating. On. You. With other women. I'm sorry, Ruth, but the way he flirts with everybody…"

"No! At least, I don't think so." Ruthie felt a cold hand closing over her heart. What if he was? How would she know? "He talks to a woman in his sleep," she said abruptly.

"To a woman?" Naomi echoed. "A specific woman?"

"Somebody called Beth,' Ruthie said. "I don't know, maybe his sister?"

"He told me he doesn't have family," said Naomi.

"I don't think he does, not anymore. I think maybe she died," Ruthie said. Her head was pounding. She hated these times, these times when the whole world seemed muddled and wrong and dark. There was nothing worse than these times.

"Hon, hasn't he even told you that?" Naomi asked. Ruthie shook her head. "Do you ever talk to each other at all?"

"Not about things like that. He doesn't like talking about the past, unless its space. He's very proud of that."

"And you're very proud of your astronaut husband," Naomi said.

"And he's so _happy_, it's like everything is a joke to him. Even when we fight, he doesn't take it seriously. The only think he takes seriously is…" She stopped, not sure if she could say it. Then suddenly Naomi was hugging her and she felt like a kid again, able to run to her big sister who could never understand, but who at least didn't try to. "He drinks, Nai. He must have had a pint and a half of whiskey last night. And more first thing this morning."

Naomi tightened the embrace, not quite trusting herself to speak but sure she had to. "Oh, Ruthie," she said. "Ruthie, it's going to be okay." The words sounded hollow, but they had to be said. Ruthie shook her head against her sister's shoulder.


	7. Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

Al leaned back against the padded seat, watching the procedings with relish. David was positively glowing with excitement. The rabbi was speaking. Even when they were talking Hebrew Al could understand about half of what was being said. He had a knack for picking up languages, though he had never had the patience to study them formally. It was a handy talent he used to pick up ladies of various ethnicities, and it had proved an invaluable survival skill: the VC didn't stop to think whether or not you could understand their clucks and hoots before they punished you for disobedience.

He sighed happily. The thought hadn't prompted chills up and down his spine. That was in the past, and this was the present, and there had been no confusion. That was all he wanted from life.

Ruthie was sitting next to him in a pink frock with chiffon flounces. She was wearing the perfume that smelled like lilacs. He surreptitiously slid his hand off of his own knee and onto hers. She didn't respond, but that was better than the dragon-talon pinch he would have gotten if he had tried that with his last wife. For a woman who had practically sprung on him like a panther that first night she had tired pretty quickly of physical intimacy.

Ruthie hadn't shown any signs of that until very recently. Now she hardly ever stayed awake for more than forty minutes after taking her night time meds. He harbored a secret hope that she would be in the mood tonight, the way she had been after her kid cousin's wedding. Al suspected he had had more fun that night than the bridegroom had—though judging by the way the newlyweds across the aisle had their arms tangled around each other, Adelaide had got over her shyness.

He pursed his lips contritely, early childhood indoctrination kicking in. Thoughts like that weren't appropriate for a church. Synagogue, he corrected himself contentedly. A much more beautiful building than any church he had ever been in, and with none of their negative associations. He closed his eyes and inhaled Ruthie's perfume, listening to the cantor.

His wife nudged him in the ribs. "Wake up," she hissed in mild annoyance.

Al wanted to protest that he hadn't been sleeping. If they had been in a Catholic church (okay, that wasn't likely; he wouldn't be caught dead in a Catholic church ever again) he would have. But they were in a synagogue, and disrespecting the rituals of other religions wasn't Al's way. Diversity was a wonderful thing…it mean that no matter how many women he wanted to forget he could always find a new one who didn't remind him of the others. This time it was Ruthie, and it was starting to look like this marriage might actualy work out: they were fighting, and still they weren't ready to murder each other. It was promising. And after all, the third time's the charm.

He smiled at her and she turned her eyes back towards her nephew. Al let his mind wander back to his wife. God, she was beautiful. Her dark hair fell right to the small of her smooth, white back when freed of its knot. Her skin was soft and pink, not the pale caramel of Lisa's or the deep, electrically-produced tan of his last wife. She had velvety brown eyes that were by turns ablaze with emotion and lifeless as two puddles of milky chocolate. So different from the mischievious, sparkling quicksilver orbs of Lieutenant Lisa Shermann, and the cold blue Hungarian eyes, and Beth's moist, beautiful—

He stopped short as the image of his first wife began to coalesce out of thin air, right before his eyes. He shook his head, driving the spectre away. His heart hammered in his chest. After six years of building her lovingly, piece by precious piece for the benefit of a fevered imagination and a failing spirit, he knew every inch of her body, every dress she had ever worn during the half-dozen years of marriage before the ill-fated second tour. And it only needed a shadow of a thought to bring her back, materializing in front of him like a hell-born hologram. Why that habit was so hard to break, he didn't know. It had taken him time to get used to the other things, like using a fork and sleeping on a soft surface and eating whenever he was hungry, but he had done it. Yet while the hardships and privations were safely relegated behind an iron wall of selective amnesia, seeping out only for the occasional nightmare or moment of phobia, the very memory that had allowed him to survive the horrors hovered on the edge of conciousness to reappear unbidden and unwanted at the least provocation.

It had been so long since he had thought of Beth—not since the breakup with the girl before Ruthie—that he had been beginning to think that the edge of the knife was dulling. Apparently not, because his stomach was knotting itself into a snare and a desolate nausea was closing on his throat. He tried to distract himself, but his hands were starting to shake and Ruthie was watching him out of the corner of her eyes, confused.

"No, you can't go outside," somebody hissed. For a second Al though that someone was reading his mind and not taking a very sympathetic view of his distress.

Then a lisping voice protested, "But Mommy, Ithabella's tired of the thynagogue!"

It was Rachel, arguing with her daughter. "Sit still and be a good—ow! Sit _still_, Miranda!"

Al twisted to look over his shoulder. Rachel was grappling with the three-year-old, who was wriggling and arching her back in an attempt to escape her mother. "No, no, no, no!" she repeated over and over again in a shrill little whisper.

Ruthie had turned. She took in the scene with a glance. "Al, for goodness sake," she started.

He had to get out of here and clear his head. A shot of liquor would have done the trick, and he had the irreverent thought that it was too bad this wasn't a Catholic church after all…

Al put his arms over the back of the seat. "I'll take her out, Rachel," he said quietly. "A little fresh air won't hurt her."

The frazzled-looking woman looked at him in numb gratitude. "Oh, Albert, _would_ you?" she asked.

"Call me Al," he whispered automatically, picking up the child and getting to his feet. It was against Calavicci policy to let any beautiful woman (even the pregnant and married sister of his wife) call him by his full name. That chore was reserved for in-laws and the occasional condescending admiral.

Miranda crooked one arm around Al's neck, clutching her plastic baby doll with the opposite hand. She let out a whoop of delight as he slipped out of the row and started down the aisle, but he quieted her with a hiss and a pat.

Al reached the door and stepped out into the warm May sunlight, only to realize abruptly that he didn't know the first thing about looking after a little girl. Boys were easy. A couple of stories about exit rockets and the tricks you could pull in a well-groomed Skyhawk and they thought you were the greatest. But _girls_? Before they hit about twenty-one he had no idea how to make them happy. Sure, Trudy had been an girl and he'd never had any trouble looking after her or keeping her amused, but all Trudy had ever asked of anybody was a bit of patience and a smile and a little affection. Besides, that had been thirty years ago.

He realized suddenly that Miranda was wiggling in his arms, trying to get down. He set her on the grass, and she trotted over to a bed of tulips, crouching down and talking very seriously to her doll, the Isabella she had been using as a surrogate earlier. After a minute or so he realized to his enormous relief that he wasn't going to be called upon as a playmate. He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and drew out his lighter and a cigar. Ruthie had expressly forbade the presence of this particular contraband at her parents' house—not really fair, because she had her cigarettes in the glove box of the Corvette. He was glad he'd disobeyed her, because drawing back the fragrant smoke chased away the ghosts, not as quickly as a little liquor would have, but completely in the end. He kept an eye on the girl, wandering around the manicured lawn, chattering happily to the doll, and let his mind roam. This time it was moving forward in time, not back.

After Ruthie's baffling reaction to his announcement—what on earth was wrong with Arizona?—he hadn't told her about it, but on Monday he was slated to meet with Starbright Project's leading theorist. She was apparently a brilliant scientist, with a doctorate in quantum physics and another in particle kinetics. The description conjured up images of a white-haired old dowager, sort of a female Einstein, but for once Al wasn't looking forward to meeting a woman because of her physical attraction. He couldn't wait to pick this one's brain. The tantalizing descriptions that MacArthur had fed him in typical layman-ese had impressed him through the simplistic language and the blank looks from his friend. It could work, it really could, and Mac had even said that the early acceleration tests were promising. What the project needed, it was plain to see, was a liaison between the world of cutting-edge science and the jungle of military and political posturing. He could be of real use at Starbright, if he could just convince this woman that he was worth his salt…

Which considering her background might not be easy to do. He had a bachelors' in inorganic chemistry with a minor in astrophysics from M.I.T., _magna cum laude_, but that was twenty years old. The return to his alma mater that had followed his NASA career had been for a Masters in computer engineering, an area that hadn't even existed back in '59. The devices compelled him, but in opposition to universal opinion he felt that the move towards smaller, more portable computers wasn't necessarily the best way to go. While he could see the potential of a world where each home had such a device, he was more allured by the concept of a macrocomputer, no smaller than the behemoths that were already fading into legend but infinitely more sophisticated. Instead of pouring energy into attempting to compress existing parameters into the smallest package possible, why not turn your attention towards improving the parameters themselves. If a computer the size of a breadbox could hold enough data to meet a family's needs, then what could a computer the size of a room hold? You could upload the history of the world onto a hard drive, and peruse it at your leisure. Of course, the problem was that sorting the data into the pertinent and useless and to draw the appropriate conclusions from it. If only there was a way to give the computer the power of independent thought… but that was impossible.

Nevertheless, he thought as he snuffed the stub of his cigar; it was an intriguing idea. And one that might impress Doctor Doctor What's-Her-Name more quickly than his outdated understanding of physics.


	8. Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ruthie took off her dress and stockings. The room had changed since she had moved out of it years ago. The posters of the Beatles and of Richard Beymer in West Side Story had been supplanted by serene watercolor landscapes. The two twin beds had been dropped in favour of a double with a dove-in-the-window quilt. But it was still the same space she and Nai had shared from Aaron's birth to Naomi's marriage, and it seemed strange to be up here, about to get into bed with a man in the room that had been forbidden to childhood sweethearts.

The celebration for David had gone off without a hitch, but not until nightfall had Ruthie realized that, in between telling animated, captivating stories to an enthusiastic young audience, directing and umpiring a baseball game, and ferrying boys around the block as if his Corvette was a carnival ride, Al had also been drinking steadily. He hadn't touched anything but the wine set out with the meal and the beer the men had passed around afterwards (at least, she didn't think he had had the gall to raid her father's liquor cabinet for whiskey) but over the course of eight hours that added up She didn't know whether anybody else had even been able to tell he was tipsy: all evening he had been behaving just like his usual flamboyant self. She wouldn't have notice herself, probably, but her mother had tracked his alcohol consumption with her all-seeing eyes and pronounced him unfit to drive. Ruthie wasn't going to be caught dead behind the wheel of the Corvette, and so Mama had insisted they spend the night.

That Al had acquiesced to the suggestion without argument was a bad sign: it meant he really was drunk. At least he wasn't being belligerent, and he hadn't made a scene, which she had been scared he would. Ruthie's confessions to Naomi were haunting her, as was the thought that somehow she was going to have to make this marriage work, even if he wouldn't meet her halfway. You couldn't terminate a marriage the way you could a tiresome friendship. A marriage, good or bad, was forever.

Having stripped to her slip, Ruthie picked up her purse and reached inside. The little vial of lithium tablets she always carried was there, but her heart sank into her stomach when she realized that the Phenobarbital was at home, next to her bed on the Lakehurst air base. It wasn't going to be a good night.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

Al felt great. He rinsed the razor he had brought for use before the Bar Mitzvah and put it back into his little toiletry case. Ruthie hadn't brought hers, and hadn't liked the suggestion that she use his toothbrush (just as well, really: there were some things that were too personal even to share with your wife), but Al never went more than ten miles from home without his. Navy training.

It had been a good day, all said and done, and although he had hoped to have a little fun with Ruthie when they got home, there was no reason they couldn't have just as much fun here.

The only downside to the overnight stay was that it would mean more time with his father-in-law tomorrow. There was nothing _wrong_ with Isaac Zelnik. He was somber, but fair, and he loved his children, and apart from being a bit of a peace zealot (who could blame him?) and so naturally critical of the armed forces he was civil and cordial enough. But it was impossible for Al to sit at a table with the man, or talk to him, or shake his hand, without thinking what he did for a living.

It was important work, God knew. There were too many people in this world who went without a decent burial, left in the sun to rot or thrown naked into a pit with a dozen other corpses, two shovelfuls of lime to speed up decomposition and hide the evidence forever. Reason told him that if people _were _going to be buried clean and tended, with hair fixed and makeup to cover the grayness of death, wearing their best suit or a freshly-pressed frock then somebody had to do the washing, the painting and the dressing. He just couldn't imagine anybody doing that job every day, much less with the enjoyment and fulfillment Ruthie's dad did.

At first, Al had shown a polite interest. He had even consented to come to the funeral parlor with Ruthie for a little tour of the family business. There had been an old lady laid out in the chapel—or whatever Isaac had called it—and Al had been surprised at how peaceful she had looked, sleeping in her satin-cushioned casket. He had praised the workmanship, starting to feel better about the whole thing, and where had that got him? Into the morgue, that was where. Isaac hadn't originally intended to show it to him, but since he was so interested… A young man had been lying on the slab there, his automobile-accident-mangled body hidden under the sheet, and his battered face waiting for reconstruction. To Ruthie's consternation and his own embarrassment Al had skittered out of the morgue and fled to the bathroom, overcome by a rictus of revulsion. That had been the end of any chance of a genuinely amicable relationship with his father-in-law.

Another sore point was Aaron, Ruthie's younger brother the draft-dodger, whose exile the whole family seemed to blame vicariously on Al. Or if they didn't blame him, at least they were constantly sounding him out, almost as if they hoped he would call the kid a coward or a traitor. He _had_ felt that way about draft dodgers once, but his mind had changed a long time ago. It was common sense, not cowardice, to fear what could happen to you over there. Any man who didn't fear the ropes and the hooks and the cages was suicidal or insane. It wasn't treason to refuse to face that for your country. Uncle Sam had no right to demand that of his farm boys and his young tradesmen. Those prisons had been purgatory for Al and the rest of the career military, the disciplined, the dedicated, the best that America had to offer. But it had been Hell, truly Hell for those poor conscripted kids. Most of them had died of despair, not malnourishment or torture. Aaron was no traitor. He was no coward, either. In fact, it took real courage to face banishment because you couldn't betray your beliefs. Sometimes Al wished he had half that boy's valor. Or his sense.

He couldn't explain that to Ruthie, though, any more than he could tell her why he wasn't comfortable around her father. There were some things she didn't need to know. She had her own troubles, she didn't need his. Besides, she didn't seem to be the sort to talk about things. Sure, her emphatic protestation that she _needed_ to know his reasons for wandering around the house in the middle of the night seemed to belie that, but you also had to take into account her adamant refusal to talk about her own problems. Al was getting to know her moods pretty well, and he could tell when it was only the medications that kept her from floating away on her own wild energy. He could see, too, when she was sinking into a trough of depression. She had never sunk too deeply yet, or stayed down too long—but from what the base head-shrinker said the condition was notoriously unpredictable.

Al hated the blue days, when she didn't want to talk or move or eat. If he tried to ask her what was wrong she would come out of the trancelike melancholy to snap at him to mind his own damned business. She maintained he wouldn't understand. He wasn't so sure about that, but if she, didn't want to talk he wasn't going to press her. Bad enough she had to go through talking to a psychiatrist. Nosy bastards, asking questions they had no right to ask and forcing you to relive miseries and humiliation better forgotten. Ruthie wasn't going to get any of that "how-did-that-make-you-feel" garbage from hi, and he didn't have to take it from her.

Of course, that left the problem of how to treat her when she was down. He hated being fussed over and tiptoed around, so he couldn't very well behave that way. All that was left was to joke and bee as cheerful as he could himself, and hope he didn't make things worse.

She seemed to be swinging down again. Maybe a little passionate lovemaking would bring her out of it. It would certainly be the perfect end to _his_ day!

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

Ruthie pulled back the quilt, the blankets and the practical cotton sheets. She was about to climb into bed when the door opened and Al slipped in.

"Hey," he murmured, closing it behind him and moving to undress. "You know, I love that slip. You have some really excellent slips, but that, that is one of the best."

She smiled thinly. When he talked about her clothes like this he only had one thing in mind. Her eyes followed him as he folded his shirt and trousers carefully. He wriggled out of his undershirt, his lean, muscled torso rippling a little as he bent to tuck his shoes under the chair by the door. He moved around the bed and put out a hand to stroke her bare arm.

"You look beautiful," he said in his velvety, seductive voice, the one where the gravel was turned to nap. "Very, very beautiful."

"Thanks," She said uneasily. She didn't want to hurt his feelings or upset him, but they couldn't do this here! An arm crawled up her back, climbing up over the silk of her slip to the lace around the top. "Al, I don't—"

He pulled her close and kissed her. He was great at kissing, really great, and she found it impossible to resist him once he started. That first time he had kissed her on that bed in a New York hotel room, she had realized what kisses were supposed to be like. Now he was reminding her. She curled her arms around his back, running her fingers over his vertebrae. He was pulling out her hairpins with the hand not clinging to her waist. Her hair fascinated him.

"Let go," she whispered breathlessly before his lips sealed over hers again. "Al," she gasped as they parted again to exhale. "Al!"

"Ruthie," he murmured, easing her back onto the bed and caressing the long coil of hair that was now hanging down her back. "Ruthie, Ruthie."

"No, stop," she mumbled, not sure if she really meant it.

"Stop?" he whispered as if he had never heard the word before, his lips moving from her mouth to her cheek and up towards her temples.

"Mmh," she sighed, closing her eyes as he kissed them. "Al, no."

"No?" he mumbled thickly.

"No…mmh…Al…" She kissed him next to his nose.

"Ruthie…"

"No," she murmured, not meaning it at all any more. She started stroking his hair, rousing his curls out of their carefully tamed conformation.

"All right," he sighed, kissing each collarbone once before slipping sideways onto the mattress. "Not if you don't want to."

Ruthie pushed herself up onto her elbows and stared at him, startled and, irrationally and unfairly, a little hurt. "Don't _you_ want to?" she asked.

"Not if you don't," he said contentedly. "You've had a busy day, so have I. And that was a _fabulous_ kiss. Just like your slip: one of the best." He leaned over and brushed his lips against her shoulder. "Good night, Ruthie."

As she lay back down he nestled his head next to her neck and closed his eyes. Confused and unhappy because she had no idea what she wanted, Ruthie pulled the blankets up over both of them. Al's hand moved drowsily across her waist to cuddle her hip. She tried to force herself to relax into sleep.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

Al curled himself in towards Ruthie's warm body, one hand on her silk-clad side, his head resting on her soft, dark hair. She didn't want to make love in her parents' house, in her old bedroom. That was okay. Beth had been exactly the same way—

No, not Beth, not Beth! He couldn't. Not Beth, not Beth, not Beth. Ruthie. Ruthie was right next to him. He could feel the rhythm of her breath under his arm, he could still smell the lilac perfume. It was Ruthie, Ruthie with her long hair and her lacy slip. Ruthie.

Reminding himself emphatically how much he liked Ruthie, who was right here next to him, right now, he fell asleep.


	9. Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

A moan woke Ruthie. For a minute she was disoriented, back in the sixth grade when they had all caught the chicken pox from Aaron. Nai had had it worst: she'd been sixteen, and she hadn't slept through a single night for two weeks. She would toss and turn and…

"No… Beth…" Al's voice brought her back to the present. She wanted to scream. If only she had brought the Phenobarbital, she could have slept through this.

"Beth…" he repeated, tossing his head a little on the pillow. "Beth, no. No. Come back. I'm sorry, Beth, I'm sorry. Come back, Beth, please! Please!"

Ruthie sat up, wide awake now, and stared down at her husband. He was visible in the light from the streetlamps outside the window. His shoulders were twitching, his arms bent up at the elbows, his hands clasping and unclasping fretfully.

"Beth, I'm sorry," he implored, his voice raspy and strained. "Beth, please, Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth! Please!

The agony twisting his handsome face made Ruthie feel sick. She put out a nervous hand to touch him, and he flinched at the contact. "Oh, God, Beth, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to. I'm sorry, Beth, Beth." A tear trickled from under his tightly closed eyelid. "Please, Beth, please."

Ruthie couldn't watch any longer. "Al!" she whispered. "Al, wake up!"

He thrashed a little, more tears sliding down his face. "Beth!" he moaned. "No—don't! Please! Come back, Beth, please! No!"

Ruthie seized his shoulder and shook him. "Al!" she said sharply. "Wake up!"

"I'm _sorry_! I didn't _mean_ to!" he gasped, eyes shooting open. They seemed to fix on her. He gasped and one hand flew to her face. "Beth, don't leave me!" he cried frantically.

"It's not Beth, it's Ruthie," she said, terrified by the nightmare that he couldn't shake. "Al, it's Ruthie."

"Ruthie?" he said in a hoarse, haunted voice. His eyes were enormous in the gloom. "Ruthie?"

"Yes," she said emphatically. "Ruthie."

He raised a hand to wipe his forehead. Then he did something she had never imagined he could do. He started crying, sobbing. "I thought…" he moaned desolately. "I thought…"

Suddenly Ruthie was holding him tightly as sobs shook his body and he clung feebly to her. She rubbed circles into his back and tried to calm him with hushing sounds and soft words. "Shh, Al, it was only a dream," she whispered. "Shh."

"No, no," he said brokenly, still trembling. "Not a dream…God, why couldn't it be just a dream? Beth…"

"No, Ruthie," she said. "Ruthie."

"Ruthie…" he echoed, hiding his eyes against her breast. His hair was damp with sweat, and she stroked it. Sounds of pain still echoed deep in his throat.

They sat like that for a long time, and Ruthie held him, rubbing his back and petting his hair. The sobs died into hiccoughs, and then into silence, and finally into the deep, steady exhalations of sleep. Even after he was obviously lost to the world she sat, holding him and thinking.

Maybe he wasn't just what he seemed after all. Maybe there was more to him than the bubble of good cheer that refused to be broken even by her blackest moods. She had never expected a scene like the one she had just participated in. Waking up in tears had always been her phantom. Al's style was more along the lines of ill-suppressed shrieks and a craving for liquor, but tonight he had cried, really cried. Perhaps he might understand her unhappiness after all?

She shook her head to drive away the irrational dream. His misery, whatever it was, was real. Something had happened to him, some kind of trauma, Doctor Tamblyn had said so. Hers was imaginary; it existed only in her mind. She had had a wonderful life: she had grown up safe and loved, surrounded by family; she had never wanted for anything; she had been good at school and even better in college once she started her meds; she had got a good job; now she had a decent husband. She had never had any pain or rejection or deprivation, not from the real world. Al might actually have a right to be unhappy, but she didn't. She thought of the picture in his side-table drawer, the little boy who was obviously him and the little girl he never spoke about. Was she dead? The nearest Ruthie had ever come to tragedy was when Aaron's draft card had come and he had packed a suitcase and bought a train ticket to Canada. She had no reason to be miserable. Al wouldn't understand. He might even hate her, because his pain was real and hers wasn't. She didn't want him to hate her.

A soft rapping on the door startled her. Her heart pounded.

"Who is it?" she hissed.

The door opened slowly and a stooped, grey-haired figure came in. Ruthie felt a mixture of horror and relief.

"Papa!" she gasped. "What are you doing here?"

"Your mother and I woke up," he said. His voice still carried its accent even after thirty-five years in America. It was a familiar sound, as comforting as his uneven diction. "We heard sounds. Your mother says leave them be, they are new married, give them their privacy. I say I was new married myself once, and never made sounds like those."

Ruthie colored a shade of crimson that she was very glad the darkness hid. "We weren't…" She shrugged a little, once again hampered by years of chastity and shy to speak of the realities of marriage, especially with her father. "We weren't," she repeated lamely.

Isaac drew nearer to the bed, nodding sagely. "That is what I say to your mother," he murmured. "She doesn't believe me. Then when the sounds stopped I told her, I am going to check that all is well. Your mother tells me it is a bad idea. Now I see she is wrong, and maybe it is a good thing that I am here?"

Ruthie didn't think it was a good thing at all, but she could hardly stop him from doing what he pleased under his own roof. Isaac sat down on the edge of the bed, where Al's knees crooked in towards Ruthie. He reached out and patted his daughter's arm where it was curled around Al's bare back. "Ruthie, tell me what is happening."

"Nothing, Papa," Ruthie said, feeling like a teenaged girl being grilled about her high school sweetheart. "Nothing. I had a bad dream."

"You had a bad dream?" Isaac echoed.

"Yes," Ruthie said, surprised by her excuse but genuinely astonished that she repeated it.

"Or your husband?" Isaac asked, his eyes glittering in the scant light. He didn't believe her.

"He's had a long day, Papa. He's a busy man. Sometimes he has dreams."

"I have long days, I am a busy man. Sometimes I have dreams. Does your mother lie about it to your grandfather?" Isaac asked. "Ruthie, something is troubling you."

Ruthie tried to explain, but the words shriveled up and died on her tongue, as surely as if she had been trying to tell him about her condition. She couldn't tell her father that her husband called to another woman in his sleep. He was already prejudiced against Al because he was a Gentile and because of the way he had behaved at their first meeting after the wedding. She shook her head.

There was a silence. Isaac looked down at his son-in-law, and slowly one of the thin, skilled fingers reached out and traced a scar on the back of Al's neck, a slender white line that arced along its base. Isaac frowned thoughtfully. He was by nature a pensive man, thinking much and saying little. His was a silent wisdom, but when he did speak, his words were carefully chosen. Tonight was no exception.

"Has he told you much of his past, your husband?" he asked at last, eyes fixed on Al.

"What?" Ruthie whispered, not sure what her father was saying.

"What he did before you were married. Has he told you?"

"He was an actor for a while, and an astronaut," Ruthie said. "Now he teaches flight school for the Navy."

"And the war? He is a pilot; did he fight in the war, across the sea in Vietnam?"

Ruthie felt tears stinging in her eyes. Didn't he think she hated that too? "He had to," she said. "He was already in the military when it started. He had to."

"Aaron had to," Isaac said quietly. "He had to, but he didn't."

"It's not the same!" Ruthie protested, trying to convince herself. She was tired and overwrought, and she had had this debate too many times with herself to be able to bear having it with someone else. "Aaron hadn't taken an oath, Aaron wasn't… it wasn't his job. It wasn't his duty."

Isaac reached out to caress her cheek. "Do not cry, little Ruth," he said, using the same gentle voice that had soothed her night terrors when she was a little girl and even taken the edge off of spells of suicidal dejection when she couldn't articulate, even to herself, why she was weeping. Sometimes she wondered whether if it hadn't been for Papa she would have been dead a long time ago. Right now she wished she had gone through with it one of those times…

"Papa…" she moaned. He reached out and embraced her, wrapping her in his strong arms and holding her close. Al's torso was pressed between them, but he was far from reality and didn't even stir. When at last they parted Ruthie's cheeks were wet with tears she couldn't stop. "I know you're disappointed about my marriage." The words were out before she could stop them. That was what came of thinking the same thing, over and over again, for months.

"No. I am so proud of you," Isaac said. "In college, when you went on the marches for peace, you and your young friends and others like you stopped that war. I was so proud. You and Aaron, you always listened to me. You listened, and then you did as I had taught you. I am so proud of you both. I will not be ashamed of you because the man you have married has different beliefs. If you love him, you must marry him."

"You don't like him, Papa," Ruthie protested, somehow sadistically bent on making him admit it. "I know you don't."

"Like him? Why would I not like him? He is good to my grandchildren. He makes my daughters smile. He pleases my wife. He is a clever man, a good provider. And the sins he committed in the name of duty, he paid his penance for them. Many times over he has paid, I think."

"What do you mean, Papa?" Ruthie asked, frowning down at the limp, slumbering figure still clinging to her waist. Again, Isaac's finger reached out and found the mark on the back of Al's neck. He shook his head slowly.

"That is not my story to tell," Isaac said. "But I do not dislike your husband, Ruthie."

"He hates your work," Ruthie murmured, her mind going back to the litany of why her husband and her father would never get along.

"Little Ruth," Isaac said; "when I was young I saw men die. Men, and women and children."

"I know," Ruthie whispered. "The war."

Isaac nodded. "The war. Before it came I loved my work because it was the right thing for me to do. It made me happy to use my skills and to meet new challenges. After the war was over, I realized that my work was not just for me, but for them, for all the people who are not cared for in death. My work became a holy thing. Do you understand?"

Ruthie nodded numbly.

"That is one thing that happens when you see the ugliness of death: you learn to love death, to love the dead, to cherish them and care for them. Or else you fear them, because even in the dead who are tended you see the neglected ones, the ones you knew in life. Your friends, your brothers. Then all death is ugly. Do you see that as well?"

Ruthie shook her head. "No," she said. "What are you trying to tell me, Papa? Please, just say it!"

Isaac shook his head. "Be patient, Ruthie. Like your mother, you brought home a broken clock. Like your mother, you must learn the workings of its gears before you can fix it. Furthermore, you must sleep before you can wake up to have breakfast, and Mama wants to make a special breakfast for her new son. Lie down and go to sleep."

"But Papa…" Ruthie began, but her father rose and disappeared through the door, and she was left alone in the dark, holding Al's sleep-deadened body, and wondering feverishly if the whole thing had been a bizarre dream or an otherworldly hallucination. She crept back under the covers and fell into a deep and natural slumber with her arms wrapped around her husband.


	10. Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN 

There were few joys in this world quite so simple or so profound as waking up in the arms of a beautiful, sleeping woman. Al cuddled against Ruthie, reveling in the soft fragrance of her skin. She had her arms twined around him, one by his neck and the other about his chest. Her face was turned towards him too, and her lips looked very warm and inviting. He was about to kiss her awake, but realized he didn't know what time it was. She was usually the early riser, but sometimes his body did strange things and you couldn't always tell when it would wake itself up. So he slipped cautiously out of her grip and slithered out of bed. She sighed and curled into the warm indent he had left in the mattress. He stood up, smoothed the blankets over her, and ran his hand once along the snaking river of dark hair.

He dressed quickly and efficiently, glad he had insisted on his own choice of casual clothing yesterday. Then he crossed the hall to the bathroom. Having shaved and brushed his teeth and forced his hair back into a smooth black helmet that would have passed the toughest inspection, he felt fresh and awake and ready to take on the day with true Calavicci finesse.

He grinned rakishly at his reflection. He had had enough to drink yesterday evening that he had slept through the night, but because he hadn't taken it all in one go he didn't have even a ghost of a hangover. It was going to be a good day.

There were sounds of someone moving around in the kitchen, so Al made his way down the stairs and towards the nucleus of the house.

Miriam was chopping vegetables by the sink, her back to the door. Al watched her for a minute, admiring her competent, economical movements. Then she set down the knife, and he saw his opportunity. He moved in like a cat, grabbed her elbow, spun her towards him and pecked her on the cheek.

"Good morning, Ma!" he said effervescently.

She laughed, clutching her heart. "Albert, I swear that fright just aged me ten years!" she gasped.

"And you still don't look a day over forty," Al told her, squeezing her arm and grinning.

She laughed harder and batted his cheek with an open palm. "Stop with the lies, young man, or I'll put you to work so you can sweat out the dishonesty!"

"Put me to work, _please_ put me to work," Al intoned dramatically, casting his hands out, palms upwards in a gesture of supplication. "Idleness is the bane of the Naval man!"

Miriam smiled at his posturing. "Don't be silly. Today is Sunday. Don't you need to go to church? Saint Peter and Paul has a service at seven. I know: I called to ask."

Over the years Al had accumulated a veritable arsenal of snarky remarks to use when people commented on his lax religious practices. However, his mother-in-law wasn't criticizing: she was genuinely trying to be helpful and the gesture showed that she was accepting that he wasn't Jewish. He shook his head.

"Mikvah Ohel Torah synagogue in Lakewood is my church now," Al said. "Ruthie's people shall be my people and her God my God."

It was a cheesy line, but not _that_ bad. It warranted a rueful chuckle at the very least, not the skeptical, curious expression that Miriam wore. Suddenly Al realized what the words suggested and smirked.

"Up to and excluding the point where circumcision is involved," he said, with such vehemence that Miriam laughed again.

"Not a requirement for a happy marriage, I promise," she said. "Now go and enjoy yourself. You have at least an hour and a half before we eat."

"Ruthie's still asleep and I don't want to wake her," Al said. "Can't I please help with the cooking, ma'am?" He cast her his best pair of sick puppy eyes, batting his eyelashes fervently.

She laughed again and shook her head. "Very well," she said. "Go out into the garden and bring me eight green onions. Do you know what green onions look like?"

Al scratched his temple. "They're…uh…tall and…er…skinny…and bright pink?"

She chuckled a little and swatted him with a tea towel. "You're as bad as Aaron!" she said. "Take your time out there. Isaac is pruning the raspberry bushes. He likes to garden in the early morning, no one knows why."

Having danced playfully out of her way, Al made his way to the kitchen door.

The back yard seemed larger than it had the night before, probably because it was no longer full of furniture. Al moved towards the east fence, where the neatly-kept vegetable garden lay, covered with spring dew. Most of the plants were still in the earliest stages of their growth, but along one stone-lined edge of the bed a crop of little leeks poked up out of the dark soil. He squatted down, careful not to kneel on the damp grass, and found eight good-sized specimens, plucking them carefully and bundling them by the narrow fronds to avoid soiling his hands. He was about to head back to the house when he remembered his mother-in-law's not-so-subtle hint about her husband.

The raspberry bushes were in the back corner of the yard, near the compost pile. Isaac was bent over them with a fine little pair of clippers, pruning away twigs that had failed to produce leaves. Steeling himself, Al approached.

"Good morning, sir," he said dutifully.

"Good morning," Isaac echoed, still focused on his work. He wasn't by nature a gregarious person, and that made having a conversation difficult: it wasn't easy to communicate when each party wanted to say as little as possible.

"I think we might be in for another sunny day," Al tried.

Isaac nodded, and kept on clipping.

"I…uh… appreciate your hospitality. I had a very restful night."

Al wasn't sure what he had said, but the older man straightened, looking keenly into his eyes. "Did you?" he asked.

"Yes, very." Al wondered what was going on behind those gray eyes.

"No dreams?"

Now that he mentioned it, there had been a dream. The same old dream: standing by the elm tree, a stranger on his own front lawn, staring at the door… Al shuddered. Thank God he hadn't woken up screaming: he usually did after that one. The nightmares about Briarpatch and the Knobby Room at Hoa Loa were bad enough, but he would sell his soul to Satan to get rid of the dream about the empty house, and the face in the window, watching him, the face he would shout at, but who couldn't hear him, because she wasn't really there…

Isaac was staring at him. "Albert?" he said softly, startling Al out of his reverie. He looked blankly at his father-in-law. "Do you want to talk about the war?" Isaac asked.

"World War II?" Al queried, trying to be amicable. "I was just a kid. I remember when it ended more than anything, because there were celebrations and ticker-tape parades, and we were all excused from school for a week. I was eleven, I think… yeah, eleven, and—'

Isaac shook his head. "Not my war. Your war."

Al sighed. He was sick of this; for crying out loud, it wasn't his fault the man's son was stuck in Canada! Enough was enough. It was time to bury this dead horse once and for all. "Listen, I'm sorry about Aaron, I really am. I wish we hadn't had to draft kids to fight over there. I admire what he did: it isn't easy to put your life where your mouth is. I wish he could come home, I know how much everybody misses him. He sounds like a great kid, and I'd love to get to know him myself…"

Isaac was still shaking his head. "Not Aaron's war. Not President Johnson's war. Your war."

Al forced a laugh. "I don't know what you mean, Mister Zelnik. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really have to get these inside…" He held up the bundle of onions.

He started to turn, but Isaac reached out and gripped his shoulder. The rolled sleeve of his shirt hiked up to his elbow with the motion, and as Al looked down at it he could see a black tattoo: five numbers etched forever in the skin. He had never seen it before, though of course he knew his father-in-law's history. Now he couldn't look away, even though he could feel Isaac's eyes boring into him. A souvenir from purgatory, an eternal reminder of hell. A laugh bubbled up in his throat. Damn, did that sound familiar!

The grip on his shoulder tightened, the bony fingers unwittingly pressing an old tender spot and sending a sharp ache into the joint. Al looked up, biting back the gasp. Isaac's eyes were somber and steady and very, very earnest.

"Albert, Ruthie loves you," he said.

Al was uncomfortable with that. He smirked. "I hope so," he said, not caring how cold the words sounded. "She married me."

There was hurt in the old man's eyes. That wasn't the answer he had hoped for, but it was the only reply Al had. The undertaker's hand fell from his shoulder and he forced yet another smile. "It was nice talking to you, Mister Zelnik," he said. "I'll just bring these in to Ma, okay?"

Isaac nodded slowly and turned back to his raspberry bushes. Al fled across the yard and back into the house, pursued by his own ghosts.

Miriam was whipping cream-colored batter into a froth. She smiled warmly as Al came in, his face once again a bright mask of cheer. "Perfect," she said. "I heard noises upstairs: I think Ruthie is awake. Go and say good morning and leave the cooking to me."

"Sure thing," Al said, giving her another kiss on the cheek. He put the onions in the sink and made for the stairs.

Ruthie was indeed awake, buttoning up her dress. She looked at him briefly, then returned to the task.

"We've got about an hour until breakfast," Al told her, trying to make conversation.

"You're up early," Ruthie commented mildly, pulling her hairbrush out of the canvas garment bag. She raised it to her head.

"Let me do that," Al said hastily, seizing upon the distraction. She complied mutely, giving him the tool and letting him sit her down on the foot of the unmade bed. He knelt up behind her and began stroking her tresses with the soft bristles. The silence persisted.

"Your mother's busy," he said, attempting dialogue. "Looks like she's cooking up a breakfast that would feed half the squadron."

"She likes you," said Ruthie. "She thinks you're too skinny: you need feeding up."

Al grimaced. "I thought you said she likes me."

Ruthie made a noncommittal humming sound. Al drew the brush through her hair five more times before she spoke.

"Last night…" she began.

"Last night was lovely," Al said, pausing in his brushing to nuzzle her neck briefly. She still smelled like lilacs.

She turned to stare at him. "_Lovely_?" she parroted in disbelief.

"Well, yeah," Al asserted, a little confused. "I enjoyed it."

She frowned, bewildered. "But…" Her mind was working furiously behind her chocolate-colored eyes. She seemed to come to a decision, and her face closed off. "It was great," she said slowly, facing forward again.

"You bet," Al concurred, smoothing her hair again. "Can I braid this?" he asked, playing with the ends of the silky strands.

She made a sound of surprise. "If you know how," she said.

"Oh, I know how," Al assured her, cordoning off the hair into three sections and beginning to plait them, pausing now and again to brush one of the tails smooth. He kept the weaving tight, but not too tight, his fingers remembering the motions from long ago. Ruthie sat much stiller than Trudy ever had, and the thick black rope grew quickly.

"I was thinking, do you want to do a little sightseeing before we head home?" Al asked. "I mean, I know you grew up here, but the only parts of Trenton I've seen are City Hall, the courthouse, the synagogue and that hall where we had our wedding reception. There must be a nice park or something. We could raid your mother's larder, pack a picnic lunch…"

"No," Ruthie said. Then she twisted again and put a hand on his chest, looking very intently into his eyes. She shook her head. "No, Al, I just want to go home and settle down on the sofa in my own living room. Okay?"

He smiled and caressed her cheek. "Sure, darling," he said, brushing his lips against hers. "Anything you want." He got up off the bed and rummaged in his toiletry bag for a rubber band. He twisted it around the bottom of her braid with two quick flicks of his wrist.

She reached back to feel his handiwork, and looked impressed against her will. "You did it," she said. "And you actually did a good job."

"I am a man," he said, pausing to kiss her neck; "of many talents."


	11. Chapter Eleven

CHAPER ELEVEN 

Miriam watched from the front stoop as the Corvette pulled away. Albert turned and waved as he taxied the vehicle down the street. Ruthie didn't look back, sitting stiffly next to him with her hands in her lap. Miriam waved back at her son-in-law as the car disappeared. She stared after them for a minute, thinking about the young Gentile.

Breakfast would have been very awkward if it hadn't been for Albert. Ruthie had been very quietly, not willing to talk, and there was something wrong with Isaac. Therefore it had been up to Miriam and Albert to keep the conversation afloat, and he had risen to the task admirably. He had started by marveling over the food, both quality and quantity. Then he had ferreted around for stories about Ruthie as a little girl and talked animatedly about his students at the base. After the food was cleared away he had declined coffee with Isaac and insisted on helping the women with the dishes. While they had worked he had regaled them with stories about his adventures as a summer stock player in high school. He had been astounded and delighted to learn that Ruthie had had a lead in her high school's production of The H.M.S. Pinafore, even going so far as to try to coax her to sing a few bars for him. She had resisted almost waspishly.

Now they were on their way back to Lakehurst. Miriam turned and went back into the house, wondering what had happened last night. Strange noises had shattered the silence of the night, and Isaac had gone, against her better judgment, to check on the young couple. When he had finally come back he had said nothing except that they had _not_ been making love, but he had lain awake next to her for a very long time.

Miriam liked this newest son-in-law much more than she did any of the other three. The whole family needed Albert. In many ways he was filling the empty place that Aaron had left in all of their lives. He had the same carefree manner, the same fierce, energetic hold on life. The way he always greeted Miriam with a quick filial kiss melted her heart: before Ruthie's wedding day she had not been kissed by a young man since Aaron had gone away. He filled needs in other hearts, too. Naomi and Dina missed the little brother who used to tease them, Rachel secretly pined for her big brother's affectionate flattery, and Albert could and did proffer both. The children who were old enough to remember their blood uncle felt his absence at family gatherings. It had been Aaron who would run around the yard, directing games and telling stories. Now, the little ones had Albert to organize rounds of baseball and referee tag, and his stories were even better than Aaron's had been, because they were true… or at least, mostly true, she suspected he exaggerated sometimes.

If Albert could be all of these things, Miriam could not help hoping, maybe he could fill some of the emptiness that Aaron's exile had left in Isaac's heart. Isaac had never been one to make friends easily: he had connected with his father-in-law at last, but had had no other close friends, until Ruthie and Aaron had started to grow up. Ruthie was like her father, quiet and thoughtful, loving in silence but enormously. Aaron was as different from the pair of them as it was possible to be. He was witty, extroverted, eternally optimistic. The only trait he shared with them was a fanatic anti-war activism, a fervent belief in the necessity for nonviolent resolution of conflict that his country had forced him to put to the test. When the draft card had come, two days after his eighteenth birthday, Aaron had wasted no time in formulating his escape plan. All the money he had saved for college was withdrawn from the bank, he had packed a single suitcase, and bought a ticket to Montreal. On the morning he had left, only Miriam had been aware of her husband's pain. As proud as he was of the boy for refusing to go, the separation was as excruciating as a death—worse, because with it came the agony of betrayal of the dream of peace and freedom that had brought him to the United States in the first place.

So she had hoped that Albert might take some of that pain away, the way he had unwittingly eased the grief of the others. The trouble was, of course, that Albert couldn't seem to get past the façade of grim silence that Isaac exuded. She had been trying almost since the wedding to get her son-in-law to talk to her husband. Over and over again they exchanged the bare pleasantries and although Isaac maintained that he didn't dislike the young captain he didn't seem to like him much, either.

This morning when she had realized that Albert had caught her hint and was going to talk to Isaac Miriam had been overjoyed. They had seemed to be trading comments about nothing in particular, and then Isaac had fixed Albert with the piercing look that always gave the recipient the feeling that he could see straight into the darkest recesses of their soul—the look that made it impossible for anyone to lie to him. Albert had shuddered, then tried to excuse himself, but Isaac had grabbed his shoulder, holding him back. Then something the younger man had said had bit back at Isaac, filling his eyes with sorrow. By the time the Gentile had reached the house he had been smiling again, but Miriam knew that the gulf between the two men was widening instead of narrowing.

With the company gone, she could at least confront her husband, provided she could find him. He wasn't in the sitting room, the kitchen, the den, or the empty bedroom that still waited for a boy who would probably never come home. She called his name up the stairs and out the back door. Finally, running out of places to look, she descended to the rumpus room.

He was sitting on the floor behind the sofa-bed, where the wall was lined with shelves full of magazines. In high school Ruthie had thought she wanted to be a journalist, and she had kept up subscriptions to Life, Time, and National Geographic right through university. Never one to abet disorder, she had filed each issue meticulously, one cardboard sleeve per year, but she had shown no desire to take them with her when she moved on to her own life in Jersey City. So they had remained where she left them, largely untouched until today.

Now two boxes from each set had been pulled down, their contents fanned out on the floor. Isaac held one copy of Time in his hands, open to a page that he was staring down at, a haunted look in his eyes.

It was that expression that made Miriam hang back. It was easy for Isaac to lose himself in the past, and it was a blow to his dignity if he was forced back to the present too quickly.

"Isaac?" she said. "I wanted to talk about Albert."

Isaac looked up at her and sighed. "Why?" he said.

"He's Ruthie's husband, and I think we should talk about him," Miriam replied, taking it slowly because his expression wasn't changing.

"Better if he had been Dina's husband," Isaac said.

"Dina's only two years older than Ruth," Miriam reasoned. "And I know Albert is a little old for her, but he's young at heart." She smiled as she thought of the Naval captain dramatically and convincingly letting nine-year-old Reuben strike him out.

"No," Isaac murmured. "No. Miriam, you remember when Ruthie first brought him to the house? I told you I had seen him before. Michael said the same thing at the wedding. And your father agreed that he looks familiar."

Miriam nodded. "The last moon mission. He was the flight commander."

Isaac shook his head. "What do I care about that? One spaceman is much like another to me. I saw him somewhere else. Look, Miriam."

He held out the magazine. Miriam looked at the cover. May, 1973. On the front cover were two men, painfully thin but fiercely proud, wearing dirty pink-and-white striped pajama shirts. The caption across their shoulders read: _America's Silent Heroes: The Men of Hanoi_.

"Inside," Isaac said.

Miriam turned to the page her husband had been looking at. Gruesome photographs stared back at her amid the columns of text: three gaunt men in smocks clustered around a hospital bed holding a fourth, smiling despite the stump where his left arm should have been; a pair of bearded, filthy men staring at the camera over the rims of mugs emblazoned with U.S. Navy decals; a man swimming in a too-large uniform, his arms around a woman and a little boy, tears of joy streaming down his cheeks. The last picture drew her eyes away from the others.

There was only one man in this one, naked except for a pair of tattered, filthy shorts that might once have been part of a uniform—or perhaps not. He was emaciated to the last degree, his thighs less in circumference than his knees, every rib standing out and casting its own distinct shadow—not all of them straight. His right collarbone seemed jointed, rising in the middle as it did at a sharp angle, so that one shoulder was higher than the other. His bare chest was covered in dark, barely-healed wounds and brilliant red scars. His hair was long, matted curls falling past his shoulders. One eye was gloriously black, swollen almost shut. Most horrifying of all were the shackles, enormous, heavy irons at his wrists and ankles linking each limb to its mate by a short chain. Despite the grainy quality of the black-and-white photograph it was obvious that the tissue where the manacles had rubbed was worn away to a bloody pulp. It was doubtful that even the man's mother would have recognized him, were it not for the enormous, rakish grin on the hollow-cheeked face.

Miriam's eyes flew to the caption, expecting to see a familiar name to confirm the horror and pity wrenching her stomach. Instead she read: _Stripped even of his dog tags, this pilot greets his rescuers with enthusiasm. "War?" he told reporters later. "There was no war in there, just you and the VC. It was personal."_

Miriam's eyes flickered back to the captive's face, trying not to see the resemblance. It was Ruthie's husband, or else his living doppelganger. She looked at her husband, who was putting away the other magazines with care.

"Isaac," she whispered.

"Just like her mother," Isaac said simply.

"How did you find out? Did he tell you?"

"Did I tell your father?" he asked. "No, last night I saw a scar, here—" He touched the back of his neck. "—where an iron collar had been left on too long, biting the flesh."

Miriam was silent. Isaac bore such a mark. The Germans had chained them together in a long line, marching them for days through a winter-wasted forest.

"I saw it," he said; "and I remembered the face. It is a very good photograph. No wonder they used it even if he did not let them use his name."

"Has he told Ruthie?" Miriam asked, closing the magazine so that she didn't have to stare at that ghastly picture.

Isaac shook his head. "That I do not know. How could I ask her? If he has not told her, she should not hear it from me."

"If she doesn't know she can't help him," Miriam reasoned. "And Ruthie would never guess."

"He has to tell her, not me and not you," Isaac said. "For him, not for her, he needs to be the one who tells her. Perhaps she knows already."

"I hope so," Miriam murmured.

Isaac got to his feet and took the magazine from her. "I am going to the funeral parlor," he said. "I need to polish the caskets for the new week."

Miriam nodded, watching him walk away, still holding the periodical. She didn't have the heart to remind him that he had polished the caskets on Friday afternoon.


	12. Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

She tried to march away, but the cajoling voice followed her across the lawn and into the house.

"Aw, Ruthie, come _on_!"

"No!" she repeated.

"Just a little? Please?"

"_No_!"

"Come on, you can't tease me like this! Just a coupla lines! I bet you've got a beautiful voice!"

"Absolutely not!"

He caught up to her when she stopped to hang her purse on the coat rack, curling his hand around her wrist and turning her so she couldn't help seeing his sparkling eyes and childish grin. "C'mon," he wheedled. "I can't believe you never told me you were an actor too!"

"I was nothing of the sort!" Ruthie protested. "It was one play in the eleventh grade!"

"You were Buttercup! The comic lead!" Al enthused. "What was it like? I always wanted to do the Pinafore!" She wrenched her arm out of his grip. Undaunted, he spread one hand over his breast and began to sing, lustily and not quite on the key. "_For he is an English man, for he himself has said it, and it's greatly to his credit that he is an English man. He remains an…_"

He carried the sound with him into the bedroom, where he was doubtless changing his clothes. He hated wearing the same outfit two days running, a bizarre idiosyncrasy for a man who spent sixty hours a week in uniform. Ruthie wanted to clap her hands over her ears and scream to drown out the singing. Mothers. You could always count on them to dredge up things you were trying to forget. She had auditioned for that horror in a fit of mania, convinced she could do anything and everything. The drama teacher had been convinced, too, but by the time the performance had rolled around, three months after her stellar audition, she had swung right back down. She had been exhausted, despondent, and substandard. Of course, her mother hadn't seen anything wrong with her performance and still talked about it as if Ruthie had been a triumphant thespian instead of a lackluster failure.

She didn't want to dwell on herself right now, anyway. She had a more pressing concern, namely the nightmare that had possessed Al the night before, that he either couldn't remember or was lying through his teeth about. She was waiting for him when he came out of the bedroom wearing a pair of Bermuda shorts and one of his old disco shirts, unwrapping a cigar as he came; and she cut him off in the middle of the second verse of "_When I Was a Lad_" with her sharp question.

"Who's Beth?"

His reaction was bizarre. He stopped singing at once, and the cigar hit the tiles. Then he blinked over his wide, alarmed eyes, and grinned, all agitation gone.

"I'm sorry?" he said casually, as if he hadn't heard the question.

"Who is Beth?" Ruthie repeated.

His eyebrows knit briefly together in credible incomprehension. He chuckled. "Is this a test?" he asked. "Um… okay… Beth… the third sister in Little Women." He squinted at Ruthie's Look of Death. "No? All right, Beth Wallace Truman, usually called Bess, thirty-third First Lady of the United States?" When she only continued to glare he shrugged. "Okay, you caught me. She was only the thirty-second, because Buchanan never married."

Ruthie felt rage welling up inside of her. He was lying through his teeth, the suave Italian bastard. Or, not lying, but certainly being deliberately evasive. If she hadn't been so sick of and discouraged with the world she might not have minded, but damn it, couldn't he be honest with her?

"You know damned well who I mean," she said. "Who is Beth?"

"Wasn't there a Beth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice?" Al asked.

You had to give him points for originality, even if you did want to rip his head off. "_Lizzie_ Bennet!" Ruthie corrected without meaning to. Trying to recover, she took a step towards him. "Who is this person named Beth that you used to know?"

He laughed. "What makes you think I used to know anybody named Beth?" he asked, still grinning that infuriating, vivacious grin.

"You dream about her," Ruthie said, the words spilling out before she could censor them or remember that she wasn't going to tell him about that. "You talk to her in your sleep. Who is she?"

For a fleeting second Al's smile faltered. His face took on a grey hue. Then he gestured enormously and vaguely with his right hand, shaking his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he told her, slowly, clearly and as poker-faced as a demon.

At first she didn't realize that she was moving at all. Then suddenly there was a sound of flesh against flesh, and she pulled back, shaking with horror. A red handprint stood out on Al's cheek. He was staring at her incredulously. A hideous silence washed between them like an ocean. Finally he tilted his head and raised two fingers to the fading mark of the blow.

"Well," he said levelly; "I think I had better cut the lawn before we end up with a savannah instead of a front yard."

He brushed past her and she heard the door open, then shut. He didn't slam it. She wished he had. A sob welled up in her throat and she fled to the bedroom, hurling herself down on the bed and weeping uncontrollably.

She might have been there for minutes, or hours, before the fit died down into deep, all-consuming misery. It wasn't just the nightmare, it wasn't just his caginess, it wasn't just the loss of her temper or the fact that she had actually hit somebody for the first time since she was a little kid. The whole universe was wrong and ugly, and she was the most wrong and ugly thing in it. She would be doing everybody a favor if she just disappeared. Why couldn't she be the one in Canada, instead of Aaron? Everybody loved him, everybody missed him, nobody would miss her. Nobody would care if she _did_ take the meat cleaver and kill herself.

That horrible second voice in the back of her head started up, the voice that told her how it would break Grandma's heart if she knew how much her little Ruthie was hurting; how ashamed Mama and Papa would be to have a daughter who had done such a terrible thing; how David and Nathan and Miranda and all the little nieces and nephews would never understand what their auntie had done and why; how upset Al would be when he came in here and found her dead body. Al hated dead bodies.

Ruthie tried to stop the voice, to conquer it. She hated that voice. She knew what was right for herself, for Ruth Jane Zelnik Calavicci. Why did all those other people matter? Grandma didn't need her, she had plenty of granddaughters. Ruthie couldn't even count them all. Mama loved Nai best, and Aaron had always been Papa's favorite: even years of protest marches counted for nothing next to Aaron's draft-dodging. The nieces and nephews preferred Al to here, and Al didn't even care enough about her to tell her the truth about that woman in his dreams. If that voice that spoke up for all of them, that voice that was on their side when it should have been on hers (it came from _her_ head, after all), would just go away, then she would finally be able to do it, to end all of this once and for all.

A third voice, the one she was most ashamed of, spoke next. Cutting your wrists open would hurt. What if you didn't have enough courage to cut right through the pain and open the wrist deep enough? Trying suicide and failing would be the worst of all. You might be trapped inside a crippled body forever, physically incapable of a second chance at the deed and wanting it more than ever. And once they knew you meant it they took you away and locked you up in a rubber room. If you tried suicide and failed, everybody knew you were crazy, and they locked you up in an institution to rot forever.

The knowledge that she was such a coward made Ruthie sob again. She didn't have the strength left for a second fully-fledged fit of crying, but the sob was there to shake her whole body and make her chest ache. Then she slipped into silence, her thoughts no longer coherent, but blurred into indistinct darkness and misery.

She heard the front door open and Al come in. He was moving around in the kitchen. She hoped he would pick up that damned cigar. She hoped he would light it and leave it on the sofa and get into his car and drive off. The whole house would catch on fire and burn, and she wouldn't run. She would lie here and let the flames eat her up, and nobody would ever know that she had stayed inside on purpose. She would be dead, and the family could have a pretty funeral, and everybody would be happy.

There was a sound of glass ringing against glass. Al was pouring himself a drink. Maybe if she took the drain-cleaning fluid and drank a cupful of that she could die. But the cowardly voice told her that maybe it would just burn a hole in her esophagus and she would still be alive, hooked up to a feeding tube for the rest of her life.

She wanted to die. God, how she wanted to die. Why had she ever been born? Why had the doctor interfered? She had tried not to be born, she had sat on her foot, right on top of Mama's cervix, but the meddling doctor had performed a C-section. Everything would have been so much easier if he had just minded his own damn business.

Outside the bedroom window she could hear the _click-click-hiss_ of the push mower. Al was doing the back yard too. She should get up and make supper for him. He was her husband and it was her duty. But she was miserable and discouraged and exhausted. She would close her eyes, just for a minute, and then she would get up and pretend that everything was okay, just like she pretended every minute of every day. And maybe, if she pretended hard enough, the three voices would all go away forever and she could have a normal life.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

A gentle hand stroked her cheek, cool and comforting. Ruthie sighed and opened her eyes. Dark brown eyes looked down at her, and pale lips curled into a placid smile.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," Al murmured. "I made us some linguini in alfredo sauce. Are you hungry?"

Ruthie blinked vaguely at him. He brushed damp hair off of her forehead. Her neck was stiff from lying on her stomach. She rolled onto her side.

Al regarded her for a minute, then straightened up and patted her hip. "Come on, have some supper. Then maybe we can play a game of checkers or something."

"Checkers?" she said, her voice fuzzy from the hot humidity of her throat.

He grinned lopsidedly, his eyes glittering wickedly. "All right, strip checkers," he said, bending to kiss her temple.

She frowned. Was that all he ever thought about?

"Come on, Ruthie, we have to feed you up," Al teased; "or you'll wither away to nothing and I'll lose you in the bed sheets."

She didn't laugh or even smile, but she got up like he wanted, because it seemed easiest and also because she felt guilty. She had hit him, like an angry two-year-old.

She had slept longer than she had meant to: it was dark outside, and all the drapes were drawn. Al escorted her to the dining room, where the table was set with her wedding china and the good crystal. Two tall beeswax candles that she didn't remember seeing around the house before formed a centerpiece with a bowlful of lilacs from the tree by the back alley. Al pulled out the chair for her and pushed it into place, then sat down across from her and filled her plate.

It was very romantic, Al was a very good cook, and she had always told herself she loved to be pampered, but the food tasted like sawdust in her mouth and his low, sultry voice was nauseatingly contented. There was nothing worse than the contentment of others when you wished you had never been born.

She didn't eat nearly as much as Al wanted her to: she just pushed the pasta around on her plate until it grew cold, and the sauce congealed into sticky, milky lumps. Then suddenly she was in the bedroom and Al was undressing her, murmuring about nothing and petting her bare skin. Then her arms were being navigated into the sleeves of a silk nightgown, and she was lifted and carried to the bed. He put something between her teeth—two tablets of lithium—then held a glass of water to her lips so she could swallow them. Then he lay her head down on her pillow and drew the covers up around her, and left.

She lay in a limbo world between waking and slumber, listening to him wash the dishes on the other end of the house, and feeling cold tears trickling in twin rivers down her cheeks.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Captain Calavicci had no idea what had gone on in the B.O.Q. over the weekend, but the Al who had once been Bingo didn't need anybody to tell him that it had been _some fun_. Every single one of the young ensigns to whom he was supposed to be teaching the rudiments of aviation clearly wanted to be somewhere else. Everyone but Ensign Leffler, of course, who was as straight-laced as a society matron's bustier and twice as tight. She was probably headed for the highest military offices. Al could already see the Republican presidential candidate putting her forward as his choice for Secretary of Defense in Decision '96 or so.

Unlike her, the boys were all fidgety, easily distracted and a little hung over. Al might have torn a strip off of them, but his mind was elsewhere, too, and he didn't want to be here any more than they did. Mondays were lousy anyway, since there was no actual air time. So Al overlooked their whispering and the doodling they were doing on their steno pads, and as soon as the clock on the classroom wall read 1100 hours, he set down his copy of the flight regs and sent them all packing with a sharp "Dis-MISSED!". Even Leffler didn't argue with this early release, which perhaps suggested she was human after all.

The moment they were gone Al dove for his briefcase and dragged out the volume his mind had been drifting back to all morning. It was a battered, twenty-year-old bible of quantum physics, in which he had taken exactly one course during his first stint at M.I.T. It wasn't exactly current, but Lakehurst, New Jersey wasn't exactly the science capital of the nation, either, and he had no time to drive to New York in search of a more updated work.

At 1240 hours he resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to get any more last minute cramming in, and he made his way to the administration building and Admiral Kelley's office. He was a little early, and so had to wait, admiring the spry young J.G. behind the reception desk. She had skin the color of bleached toffee, and a pair of _urns_ that could have started the Trojan War.

Finally Kelley came out of his office. He was in his dress whites, and Al glanced down at his immaculately pressed but undeniably khaki uniform as he got to his feet and snapped to attention.

"At ease, Captain," Kelley said. He was the kind of superior that you _could_ actually relax around, as long as you chose your moments. Al scowled at him.

"You didn't tell me it was full dress," he groused.

"It isn't," Kelley told him. "I'm commander of this base, entertaining an important federal employee, you're a flight instructor trying to break into the world of top-secret research. We both look the part."

They started down the corridor to the boardroom. Al rubbed his forehead. "Admiral… uh… any tips you can give me, here? I'm really anxious to make a good first impression."

"My advice, Calavicci?" Kelley asked. "Pray. They say Doctor Eleese has turned down more men on this project than we lost in Vietnam."

How reassuring.

"But doesn't Mac—Admiral MacArthur—have the final say?" Al asked.

"Sure, officially. But Eleese is the top-qualified scientist in the world, at least for Starbright Project. If she doesn't want you they won't take you, because if she digs in her heels and packs up they can't replace her." Kelley paused thoughtfully, his hand hovering over the doorknob. "But don't try any of that Italian charm," he warned. "She isn't the type to take kindly to it."

Before Al had a chance to contemplate that remark, Kelley opened the door and they stepped into the room. Military instinct threw Al to attention again as he saw Admiral MacArthur, standing by the foot of the table. The stance was mimicked by Kelley and then by by Mac, who followed it up with the mandatory "At ease, Captain."

"Good to see you, Admiral. It's been too long," Al said. Then his eyes fell on the woman sitting boredly next to Mac's empty chair, and for a second he could think of nothing else.

Frizzle-haired old science bat? No. Doctor Eleese was beautiful. A cloud of dark curls was pulled back from her stunning, chiseled face. Her lips were full and dark, her eyes bright and beautiful despite their disinterested expression. Now there was a woman worth launching ships for…

Mac was speaking. "Captain Calavicci, this is Doctor Donna Eleese, one of our top theorists at Project Starbright. Doctor Eleese, Captain Albert Calavicci."

Al extended his hand and the physicist met him halfway. "Pleased to meet you, Doctor," he said. He was about to add a little bullshit about how he was familiar with her work, but caught himself in time. This wasn't a pickup, it was a chance at something he really wanted, and he wasn't going to blow it by being caught in a fib.

"Likewise," Eleese said, but she didn't look like she meant it to any especial degree.

"Shall we sit down?" MacArthur suggested. He resumed his chair. Kelley took one across from him, which left Al across from Doctor Eleese. MacArthur slid a manila folder full of typewritten pages across to Al. "Obviously, gentlemen, anything we say today goes no further than this room. Starbright Project is one of our highest security priorities in research and development, and we cannot afford any leaks, especially at this juncture."

"Absolutely, Admiral," Al said.

"Have you looked over the brief?" Eleese asked, studying him out of one eye.

MacArthur stepped in. "Actually, I wasn't able to get it to Captain Calavicci in time," he said. "He was off the base for a family function on Saturday, and apparently left a little earlier than I expected."

Cursing Ruthie and her never-ending stream of family functions, Al dredged up a rueful smile.

"What sort of family function?" the woman queried, making a cursory nod at the conventions of small talk.

"My nephew's Bar Mitzvah," Al said.

The first spark of interest showed in her face. "You're Jewish?" she asked.

Truth speaks louder than credentials—of which he had precious few. "No, my wife," Al said. "I was born and raised a Catholic."

"So was I," Donna said dispassionately. Al wondered anxiously whether that meant that his long-abandoned faith was an asset or a liability.

"Although I haven't had the chance to go over this," Al said, patting the stack of papers he had been given; "I did have an opportunity to speak with Admiral MacArthur about the nature of the project. I'm intrigued by your theory and impressed by your courage. It has been generally accepted that the light barrier can't be broken."

She gave him a cold look that told him that this objection had been raised hundreds of times before, probably by hundreds of military nozzles just like him.

"Of course," he said, cutting in hastily before she could say what he knew she was going to; "everyone said the sound barrier couldn't be broken, too, until Chuck Yeager did it."

She mildly annoyed, and Al fought a grin. He had stolen her thunder there: not a bad recovery from his A-1 blunder. "From what Admiral MacArthur has told me you have had some promising results."

"Not results," MacArthur corrected. "But early propulsion tests have proved promising. We've achieved velocities as high as thirty kilometers per second in the article accelerator!"

"The _p_article accelerator?" Al asked.

Doctor Eleese shot him a withering look that made him feel like an absolute idiot.

"Obviously we can accelerate particles almost to the speed of light," she said coldly. "The applications of that are enormous. At Starbright we have two objectives. The first and greatest is to achieve electron acceleration beyond that barrier. What the Admiral is talking about is our second objective: to determine the maximum speed to which macro-objects can be accelerated. Clearly," she said with a cynical curl of her lip; "the Navy is only interested in the military applications of our work."

"I disagree, Doctor," Al said, unable to let that one slide. "The United States Navy is very interested in all areas of research, not only those that will benefit us in combat. However," he added with a smirk; "I imagine that having a sideline like yours does make it a little easier to dredge up funding from those tight-fisted nozzles in Congress."

MacArthur covered a snort with his hand, and Al could sense Kelley tensing. Doctor Eleese raised her eyebrows.

"Tight-fisted what?" she said.

Bad move? Al wondered fleetingly. Well, it was said, and he couldn't take it back, so it was best to turn on the Calavicci charisma and hope Kelley was wrong in his character assessment. "Nozzles. Jerks, morons, cretins," he translated. "Soulless minions of orthodoxy."

Was it his imagination, or had the corner of her mouth just twitched?

He decided to tell himself it had, because that made him a little less nervous. He launched into a thought that had occurred to him when he was supposed to be paying attention to his students. "What interests me, personally, is that everyone has said that the light barrier can't be broken. The fact that we can get so close to it—99.9853 percent, I think?" She nodded tersely. "—seems to confirm that. But just because we can't accelerate anything past that barrier—at the moment—doesn't mean that there isn't a whole universe within our own, _already_ moving at the speed of light. Just because matter resists being accelerated past as speed doesn't mean it can't move beyond that speed."

Eleese's expression changed fractionally. "And if it can't be done?" she pressed. "How do you feel about that waste of the government's time, effort and money?"

"It won't be wasted," Al told her, genuinely in earnest. "We don't need to succeed, we just need to try. How long did people struggle with combustion engines before they got one that would move a wagon? When we don't succeed with Starbright, at least we'll have laid the foundations for the next project, and the project after that, and the project after that." Something else occurred to him, taking him sharply off of that tangent. "Light has properties of both a particle and a wave, doesn't it, Doctor?" he said.

She was lost in some kind of thought. "Uhm."

"What if we could configure a computer to speed up the particle we were trying to accelerate in such a way that it was moving like a wave? Or if we tried to accelerate a stream of lateral-moving electrons instead of a group of rising particles?"

She smiled coolly. "Leave the science to the scientists, Captain. We're only looking for an administrator."

Time for the hard sell. "You've found the man for the job, you realized that, don't you?" Al said. "You can tell I can speak your language, and these gentlemen will tell you I'm fluent in political jargon too. You don't take me, Doctor, and you'll be making a big mistake."

Eleese got to her feet. "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen," she said. "I need to powder my nose."

And what a pretty nose it is, Al thought, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

Eleese left the room and Al looked at Mac.

"Well done, Al," the Admiral said. "That's the farthest she's got with any sailor yet."

Al slumped back in his chair, letting the nervous tension leech out of his limbs. "Not the most personable egghead, is she?" he asked.

Mac chuckled ruefully. "Don't antagonize her. I'll be honest with you, Calavicci, I really need you on this project. Science isn't the life for me, and with things boiling up in the Middle East again I'd really like to ship out, get on the right side of that damned desk. But even if research isn't my thing Starbright is kind of my baby. You don't mean to get attached, but you spend two years of your life building a thing and it happens. The Project is just starting to lift off, and I don't want to leave her in the hands of some ordinary idiot who'll run her to earth so hard that she'll be grounded forever. You come on this project, Al, I guarantee you'll be running it within eighteen months."

Kelley snickered. "If that's not a good reason to get into a squabble with that lady tiger, I don't know what is."

Al tried to keep back the exhilaration. This was exactly what he needed. Something totally new, a fresh start, a chance to revitalize his flagging career. It was what Ruthie needed, too. A complete change of pace might jar her out of the depression she was definitely slipping into. Last night had scared him, though he wouldn't even admit it to himself: he had never seen her behave like that before.

"I'll play nice with Brains," he promised Mac. "If I start choking tap Morse code prompts onto my foot, okay?"


	14. Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After another ninety minutes of interrogation about his knowledge of computers and chemistry, Al was released from the clutches of the scientist and sent on his way. MacArthur hadn't been able to offer anything by way of a verdict, of course, but the offer of a visit to the site still stood, and Al didn't think he had fallen on his face. That didn't stop him from reliving every minute of the encounter, reworking his responses from what he had said into what he wished he had said.

Free for the rest of the day, thanks to Kelley's benevolent spirit and the fact that he was going to be officially on duty this weekend, Al got into his Corvette, battening down the top. He was headed for Lakewood. Ruthie had had a rough weekend, and today was their three-month anniversary. Those were two excellent excuses for flowers and a little present.

The present was easy. She had had her eyes on a pair of silver filigree earrings with teardrop sapphires for weeks now. She was hankering after them, but the thrifty housewife instinct was too strong, and she couldn't justify shelling out sixty dollars on a useless trifle. Not that she had said anything, but you could always tell when a woman was craving a bauble.

Flowers were harder. He realized as he came out of the jeweler's that he had absolutely no idea what Ruthie's favorite flower was. She had planted daisies and marigolds in every bed around the bungalow, but those weren't fancy bouquet materials. Beth had been easy, filling the house and the yard with calla lilies and still doting on five perfect stems bound with white ribbon—

The Hungarian, Al thought fiercely, driving back the unwanted memory. What kind of flowers had the Hungarian liked? He couldn't remember. He would swear to God he had suppressed more memories about that woman than he had about Briarpatch. Not Hoa Loa, or that stinking jungle hell where his obstinacy and smart mouth had finally landed him, but definitely Briarpatch. Whatever she had liked, though, you could bet it had cost an arm and a leg. He'd never met a woman with such expensive bad taste.

Lisa, now, Lisa had loved daffodils. There had been something about the lacy yellow bonnets that had sung to her soul. Her husband, the nozzle, had never been able to remember that. At her funeral he'd filled the damned church with lilies. Al had brazened the whispering gossips to lay a glorious bundle of daffodils on her casket.

The thought of yellow flowers brought him back to the first bouquet he had ever given a girl. Hannah Gretz had been the most beautiful girl in the fourth grade. She was one of the children from the neighborhood who came to school at the orphanage because their parents didn't have enough money for the uniforms required at the good school. One Saturday Al had snuck out to visit her, assembling her bouquet as he walked the six blocks to her tenement. He had picked dandelions from the cracks in the pavement. He had even found a crushed violet in the gutter, an abandoned favor from some young woman's night of dancing. He had tied the bedraggled bundle with red threads from his fraying shirttails. Hannah had loved it.

That settled the matter almost as conclusively as if Al had actually remembered what kind of blossom Ruthie liked. He would get her yellow flowers, not dandelions, of course, and not daffodils either. Roses. He would buy her a dozen yellow roses with ferns and baby's breath.

Mission accomplished, he headed towards home, lighthearted and as content as he was ever going to be. He didn't bother with the door of the Corvette, hopping out with a quick push that made him feel young and alive again. He grabbed the two parcels and sauntered happily up the walk.

The front door was locked, which put a little crimp in his grand entrance, but after a brief fumble with the keys he was in.

"Ruthie!" he called. "Ruthie, I'm home! Happy Anniversary!"

No answer. He closed the door and locked it—there was something very empowering about being able to lock yourself in.

"Ruthie!" he called, passing through the dining room into the kitchen. Maybe she was napping. He went into the bedroom. No Ruthie. The spare room was equally bereft, as was the bathroom.

"Ruthie?" he tried one more time. Maybe she was out? No, he had seen her Honda on the garage pad. She might have gone for a walk, but his gut was telling him that this wasn't the case. She was here somewhere, in the house.

He glanced into the empty sitting room, and then went back to the kitchen. It was immaculately clean—in fact, the whole house was spotless even by his wife's standards—except for the meat cleaver, which lay on the stovetop. He picked it up and returned it to the block with the other knives.

"Ruthie?" he repeated. Only silence answered him.

Tired of this game, Al went back through the dining room and into the living room from the other direction. He stopped, having finally found Ruthie.

She was sitting on the sofa, semi-prone amid the cushions. While the whole house was in perfect order, its mistress was a nexus of disarray. She was still in the nightgown Al had got her into last night, though she had put her housecoat over it. Her hair was in the braid he had done at her parents' house, or rather mostly out of it, frizzled and tangled in a cloud around her head. There was dust on her clothes and a smudge of silver polish on her cheekbone. She was staring vacantly off into space.

"Ruthie, honey?" Al said.

She didn't answer.

"Ruthie?"

She was still staring, unblinking, at the dormant television set.

Al touched her shoulder. She didn't move. "Ruthie?" Al squatted beside the sofa and looked into her eyes. They were blank and dark. He felt a thrill of fear. Had she had a stroke or something? "_Ruthie_?" he repeated, putting one hand on each shoulder and shaking her.

She gasped and grabbed his arms, startled out of her trance. Relief that she was okay flooded him, and he hugged her tight.

"Ruthie, honey, what's wrong?" he asked.

She fought to get free of his grip, and he let her go. She slumped back onto the sofa.

"Nothing," she said numbly. "Leave me alone."

"Are you okay?" He fixed her with firm eyes. She looked away. "Ruthie…"

"I'm fine. Just leave me alone."

She wasn't fine, even he could see that. He felt for her pulse. It was slow and strong. He pressed his fingers to her forehead, but there wasn't even a trace of fever. "How long have you been sitting here?" he queried.

"I cleaned the house," she said.

Al frowned. Her voice was hollow, as if it was coming from another world. She was lost in the darkness of her own mind. He had seen too many go this way. First they stared at the wall for hours, silent. Then they stopped eating. Then pneumonia or malaria or a too-energetic beating carried them off.

But this wasn't Vietnam, and Ruthie wasn't a prisoner of war. The despair wasn't external. He couldn't talk her around, he couldn't order her to eat, and shouting at her wasn't going to do any good either.

"Has this happened before?" he asked. Maybe it was normal for people with her…condition.

"I clean the house every couple days," she answered. "Whether it needs it or not."

A smile visited his lips briefly. She was joking. Or was she? "Happy Anniversary," he said.

She looked vacantly at him. "Happy what?"

"It's our three month anniversary," Al told her. "You don't look like you're in the mood to celebrate, but I brought you flowers."

He reached over and picked up the triangular package, unwrapping it. He laid the bundle of blossoms in her arms. She stared down at them.

"Roses."

He nodded. She sighed and picked one up, twirling it between her thumb and forefinger.

"Have you ever noticed," she said hypnotically; "that roses are just like life?"

"No," Al murmured dully. "I never noticed that."

She didn't seem to hear him. "Beautiful looking, bright, sweet-smelling. And then they gouge you with their thorns." Her finger dug down on one of the sharp protrusions, and a red orb of blood began to ooze out.

"Hey, careful!" Al cried in alarm, grabbing the injured phalange and popping it into his mouth, sucking away the blood. Ruthie pulled her hand away.

"That's disgusting," she said crossly. Then she sat up and pushed the flowers into his arms. "Put those in water before they wilt all over my carpet." She got to her feet. "I was going to make a tuna casserole for supper. Do you care?"

"I'll make supper," Al offered. "You go have a hot bubble bath and enjoy your quarter-year anniversary."

"You made supper last night," she said firmly, sounding more like herself with every word. "Put those flowers in water, get out of that uniform and watch football or something."

"It's baseball season," Al said, resisting the urge to suggest that she help him get out of the uniform. She didn't need to be pressured into making love right now.

"Don't be fresh with me!" she snapped, striding out of the room.

Al sat back on his heels and watched her retreat towards the bedroom. Whatever he had just done, she was out of the terrible depression she had been lost in a minute ago. Had she really come out of it, though, or just put on a mask of brisk efficiency? Although it was a warm afternoon in late May, he felt a chill run through the room.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wednesday marked the halfway-point in what was shaping up to be the most miserable week of Ruthie's entire brief marriage. First there had been the disastrous night at her parents' house, then the fight on Sunday, then Monday, when Al had come in to find her in the midst of a battle with herself. She had pulled herself out of it and built up the wall of the false Ruth Zelnik, but not quickly enough. He had seen too much, and although he hadn't pressed her for details she knew he wanted to know. She could feel him watching her all the time, every minute they were together, like a spider waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting fly, the second it let its guard down.

They had hardly spoken to each other these last few days. He seemed wary of her, she was certainly wary of him. She took the Phenobarbital dutifully every night, and hadn't been awakened by any more of his night terrors, but that didn't mean he wasn't having them.

It was almost noon now, and he was at work. _On duty_, she reminded herself, still trying to acclimatize herself to life as a sailor's wife. Did he have a girl in every port? He used to. What about Lakehurst, did he have one here? Was he with her now, instead of where he said he was? How would she know if he was? Who could blame him? She hadn't exactly been the dutiful, loving wife lately, had she?

She went to the sink and filled a glass with water. Her physician told her she had to drink plenty of water, every day, to keep her kidneys healthy. The lithium would help her lead a normal life, he said, but it was hard on her kidneys.

He was lying. This wasn't a normal life.

The purr of an engine came from the front lawn. Ruthie ran to the window. Maybe Al was home early. Maybe he would want to take her into the bedroom. If they made love, just like they had on their honeymoon, maybe she would work up the courage to try to explain. She knew it was hurting her that she was acting this way, and maybe if he understood it would help him. Maybe it would even help her.

Or maybe he would have her committed before she could hurt herself. The doctors were always worried about signs you wanted to hurt yourself, and the hole the thorn had made in her finger was deep and still sore. It had felt so good to break the skin and feel the jolt of pain…

It wasn't Al. It was a green station wagon. The driver's door opened and Naomi got out. Ruth couldn't believe her eyes: Naomi! Her sister went around to the other side of the car, opening the back door to let two-year-old Joshua out of his car seat. Then she opened the front passenger door and unbuckled the plastic bassinette that must have baby Sarah in it. Ruthie ran to the front door, opening it even before her sister reached the stoop.

"Nai!" she cried, grabbing Joshua's tiny hand and helping him navigate the large concrete step.

"Ruthie," Naomi said. "Mind if we drop in?"

"What are you doing here?" Ruthie asked.

"We came to see you. Didn't we, Josh? We came to see Aunt Ruthie."

The little boy ran into the house. "Came to see Aunt Ruthie," he parroted. "Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Al." He looked around the dining room in puzzlement. "Uncle Al?" he asked.

"No, Josh, Uncle Al is at work," Naomi said firmly. "We came to visit Auntie Ruthie."

"Uncle Al at work? Daddy at work?" the boy said, running and squatting to peer under the table as if expecting to find two grown men hiding under it.

"You drove for an hour and a half just to see me?" Ruthie asked.

"Sure, why not?" Nai said. "Michael's got an early court slot, he'll be home when the big kids are done school, so I packed up these two little bundles of joy to visit Auntie Ruthie." She set the bassinette down on the dining room table and put a finger to her lips. "Shh, the little goose finally fell asleep. She's going through the first let's-see-if-we-can-drive-Mommy-crazy stage."

Watching her carefree older sister breeze around, Ruthie began to cheer up a little. Aside from that disgraceful confession in Mama's basement, Nai had absolutely no idea how close to the edge Ruthie had been all week, and if it wasn't real for Nai then Ruthie could pretend, the way she couldn't when Al was around, that everything was really perfect.

Naomi was admiring the vase full of roses by the bay window. "These are gorgeous, Ruth!" she said. "Where did they come from?"

"Al," Ruthie said, shy pride that she had such a romantic-looking husband vying with the humiliating knowledge that she couldn't stand the sight of him right now. "Quarter-of-a-year anniversary present."

"You lucky thing!" Nai said enviously. "For my quarter-of-a-year anniversary present Mike left his underwear on top of the television set."

"Al's very careful with his clothes," said Ruthie.

"Mama said you two spent Saturday night at home," Nai commented.

"Well, we were both tired…"

"And Al had been drinking."

Ruthie felt tears of frustration prickling in her eyes. Couldn't Naomi have left that alone? Couldn't she have even a little break from her problems? She wasn't going to cry, though.

"Lots of men drink."

"Yes, lots of men drink," Naomi said. "And lots of them do terrible things when they're drunk. They say things that aren't true, or they hit their wives."

"Al doesn't hit me!"

"Would you tell me if he did?"

Ruthie stamped her foot, not caring that she wasn't the two-year-old in the room. "Mind your own business!"

She went into the kitchen, fighting to control herself. When she was low like this, when she was depressive, the tiniest things could send her right over the edge. Joshua had backed himself against the sink, two fingers in her mouth and his eyes wide, staring at her. His usually calm and quiet auntie was screaming like a banshee. She forced a dilute smile.

"Josh, honey, do you want some apple juice?" she asked. He nodded, eyes still enormous. She found a plastic cup and poured him the sweet beverage. "I've got cookies, too, if Mommy says it's okay."

"Not until after lunch," Naomi decreed, quashing the boy's hopeful expression. Everybody knew when Nai meant business, though, so he sat down on the linoleum under the Formica table by the fridge and held the cup to his lips with both hands. Ruthie reached into the freezer and pulled out a Tupperware dish of homemade tomato soup, starting to prepare a meal she had originally planned to skip altogether.

Naomi waited almost three minutes before broaching the subject again. "Ruthie, anybody can see you're not happy," she said.

"Oh, really?" Ruthie didn't look at her sister as she took a ladle and began to move the half-frozen slush into a saucepan.

"What is it?"

Ruthie searched wildly through the last few days, trying desperately to dredge up something that she could admit to, something that Naomi would accept as the cause of her melancholy. To her infinite relief, she seized upon it.

"Al's trying for a transfer to a top-secret government project," she said, the words spilling out and tripping over each other in their haste to cover up the truth. "If he gets it we're going to have to move to Arizona."

Naomi stared at her. It was a long minute before she could speak. "_Arizona_?" she whispered in disbelief. "Oh, Ruth…"

Ruthie felt a wave of relief. Of course. Nai, who had never been farther from home than Coney Island, who had married her childhood sweetheart, who was still living nine blocks from the house in which she had been born, couldn't even imagine such a relocation. She was buying it.

Ruthie milked her audience. She was so practiced at hiding herself that this wasn't even a real challenge. "It's not so bad… I guess…" She sighed.

"Honey, it's terrible!" Naomi said. "How can he expect you to move so far away? When did he tell you about this?"

"Saturday, during the drive in," Ruthie said.

"Has he even discussed this with you?" Naomi demanded.

"Not really… but, I mean, I knew when I married him that he might get moved around a bit…"

"A _bit_?" Naomi squeaked in consternation.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

After letting her sister rant and rave for a while, Ruthie was beginning to feel a bit better. It was almost like happiness, almost as if she could really be happy again--something that always seemed impossible during the low times. They ate and washed the dishes, Joshua went down for a nap in the master bedroom. Then Sarah woke up and Ruthie spent some time dandling her little niece on her knee and coaxing smiles out of the chubby little angel. Naomi's anger faded, and she finally stopped railing about Al's selfishness and unreasonable expectations. After that they had a really good visit, talking about old friends and sharing childhood memories. Joshua was just emerging from the bedroom, bleary-eyed and yawning, when the front door opened and Al came in. He looked tired and discouraged, his usually immaculate uniform rumpled and sweaty.

He didn't look up as he removed his dusty boots. "Ruthie, I'm home," he called. "Sparks had a bit of an accident; I swear that kid is a lost cause."

When Ruthie didn't answer right away he turned towards the living room. A look of frustrated annoyance flitted across his face in the moment it took him to deaden his features. "Hello, Naomi," he said heavily, as if this was exactly the kind of lousy twist he had been expecting at the end of a difficult day.

To make matters worse, little Joshua was now awake enough to recognize his favorite uncle. "Uncle Al!" he roared in joy, sending himself barreling towards the drained captain with the force of an anti-aircraft missile.

Ruthie was frightened for a second that Al would reject the attention or snap at the boy. His temper could be very short at times, and such a scene would bring Nai back to the idea that he was a violent drunk. She should have known better. No matter what, the insufferable Calavicci spunk would rise to the occasion as if there was no such word as "problem".

"Hey, Joshua!" Al bellowed, intercepting the boy mid-charge. He hooked a hand in each armpit and swung the child over his head and onto his shoulders. "Knocked down the walls of Lakehurst yet?"

Joshua was too little to catch the rather ricketty allusion, but he drummed on the dusty head of curls that were losing their military appearance. "We seed the walls, Uncle Al! Big, big walls! And airplanes! I seed an airplane!"

"Yeah, I'll bet it was Sparks," Al grumbled morosely. Then he bounced the boy so that Josh squealed in delight. "So tell me, big brother, have you been taking good care of your little sister?"

"Bestest care," Joshua assured him. "I loves Sarah." He wrinkled his nose. "Sometimes she smells funny."

A shadow came into Al's eyes that hadn't been there before. He slid Joshua off his shoulders and into his arms. "Yeah, sometimes little sisters smell funny," he agreed. Then he knelt and set Joshua on the ground.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "Are you a big boy who knows his colors?"

"Yup! Red and yellow and pink and green and…"

Al smiled. "Good. Now, do you know which bedroom is Auntie Ruthie's?"

"Yup! I haded a nap in Auntie Ruthie's room."

"All right. Not in Auntie Ruthie's room, but in the other bedroom, if you look under the bed you'll find a blue box. Bring it out here, and Auntie Ruthie will show you what's inside."

"He's too young to remember all that, Al," Naomi said in mild exasperation.

"No you're not, are you?" Al asked Joshua.

Joshua said, "Not little. Big boy. Blue box under th' bed."

"In the other room, not Aunt Ruthie's room," Al agreed, watching the boy toddle off down the hallway. He got to his feet. "What brings you out here?" he asked Naomi.

She gave him a hard look. "Ruthie doesn't want to go to Arizona," she said.

Al shot Ruthie a look of surprise. She shifted uncomfortably. "Nai, I didn't say that—"

"Ruthie, I told you we'd work it out," Al said, his voice carefully calm.

"Al, I just—" Ruthie caught herself. Naomi didn't know she was crazy, and she wasn't about to let her know, either, which meant that she couldn't explain to her husband why she had let her sister think that, not right now. Al was just going to have to be angry for a while. "We'll talk about it later."

"You're damned right we will," he said, very deliberately. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have had one heck of a day, and I am going to go and have a bath."

He walked into the dining room. Ruthie wanted to fill up the void he left with words that would cover up the sound of what she knew he was going to do, but she couldn't find any. She could feel Naomi's eyes boring into her as the liquor cabinet opened and the whisper of falling whiskey bit through the air. Then the china cabinet opened and closed, and Al passed through into the hallway, whiskey in one hand and an unlit cigar between his teeth, almost tripping over Joshua as he came out of the spare room with a blue shoebox clutched in both his hands. Al disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door forcefully behind him. As the water began to run Joshua launched into Ruthie's leg and thrust the box onto her lap.

"What is it?" he asked, clapping his hand. "Open, Auntie Ruthie!"

Ruthie lifted the lid off the box, revealing a sea of Lego bricks that she had had no idea were even in the house.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

Naomi stayed for ninety minutes after that, probably hoping that Al would emerge from the bathroom so that she could referee the fight that even the least clairvoyant among the assembled could see coming. He didn't. Finally she gave up, packed her children into the car, kissed Ruthie and drove off in the direction of Trenton, looking to be home by six.

Ruthie stood on the lawn for a long time, lost in darkness. When the shadows began to stretch and the sky turned red she came back inside, lost in a turmoil of guilt and futility. Al was in the kitchen, warming over his linguini in the oven. She hung back, not wanting to be the first one to speak.

Apparently he didn't want that honor either, because he took the pan out, filled a plate, ate at the kitchen table, washed his dishes, and poured himself a glass of wine in absolute silence.

Unable to stand it any longer, Ruthie made her mouth form words. "Al, Nai's just projecting her own—"

"I'm flying to Arizona tomorrow afternoon," Al said, not making eye contact and plowing over her words as if he couldn't hear her. "Mac and his little Marie Curie are all done in New York, and they want a lift. I'll be home late Monday night. Don't wait up for me."

"Al," Ruthie begged; "can we please talk about this?"

He didn't answer her. He was swirling his wine glass by the stem. She stepped forward and put a hand on each of his tense shoulders. "You've had a bad day," she said, starting to massage the rock-hard tendons; "and Naomi made it worse. I'm sorry. She's my sister and sometimes she worries about me. That's all. She just wants to take care of me."

"Of course she does," he said, in a dark, jaded voice she had never heard before. "That's what big sisters are for."

"Are you sorry you married me?" Ruthie asked timidly.

Al took a long draught of wine. "I'm sorry I married your family," he said frostily.

Ruthie withdrew her hands. "If that's the way you feel—"

"That's the way I feel."

She stepped back, needing to distance herself from this grim stranger but almost afraid to turn her back on him. Naomi's words echoed in her brain. _Yes, lots of men drink. And lots of them do terrible things when they're drunk_. Maybe he _was_ going to hit her. She wondered if it was going to hurt. She almost hoped it would.

Al drained the wineglass and got to his feet. He looked at her once more, his expression inscrutable, and then turned sharply on his heels and strode out of the kitchen. She heard him move down the hallway, and then a door closed. She ran after him. He had gone into the spare room. Shaking, she returned to the kitchen and filled the glass he had abandoned with tap water. She switched off the light and went into the master bedroom. She took her lithium, gleaning some small comfort from the nightly ritual. She picked up the bottle of Phenobarbital and stared at it. There were still plenty of tablets inside. Doctor Tamblyn had told her to take two if she needed them, but they were working so well that she only needed one to make her sleep through the night. She wondered suddenly, staring at the little yellow discs, whether if she took two she could sleep through tomorrow. Or the whole bottle. There were still plenty of tablets inside. If she took them all at once, maybe she could sleep forever.

She shook out one tablet and swallowed it. Then she capped the vial and started to undress.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

Ruthie was so grateful that she didn't have to get up and go to work. She had loved working as an editor most of the time, slashing brilliant red lines through the writing of another person, knowing that her opinion would be respected and attended to. On mornings like this, though, when all she wanted was to curl up and die, it had been brutally difficult to get out of bed and drag herself downtown. Sitting at a desk while the words swam in front of her eyes, wondering if she could jimmy the window open and plunge down eleven stories into Jersey City traffic… it was much better to stay in bed.

Al was gone. He had left yesterday afternoon without having spoken to her once since Wednesday night. He wouldn't be back until late Monday night. She had four days: today and Saturday and Sunday and Monday. Four days was enough time. All she needed was four days, with no interruptions, and she could make it so perfect. Just right. Just like she had always planned it. Except now she had a better idea, so much better than the meat cleaver. It wouldn't hurt at all.

She would go to sleep. She would go to sleep and she would never wake up. Everything would be perfect.

First, though, she had to clean the house, and that meant she had to get out of bed. She struggled against the sheets, then fell back, weepy and tired. She had to clean the house. She couldn't let her husband come home to a dirty house. She tried again.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

She did the outside first, washing the windows and weeding the flower beds. Al had cut the lawn on Sunday, so that was fine. Then she cleaned the kitchen. She took all of the dishes out of all of the cupboards and washed them. She washed the cupboards. She put the dishes back. She heaved and dragged on the refrigerator until it slid away from the wall and swept behind it. She washed down the walls, she scrubbed the floor, she cleaned the stove.

In the dining room, she scrubbed the sideboard and dusted the blinds. She vacuumed the fringed rug. She polished the pine table and the chairs and the sideboard. The roses were beginning to wilt, but she left them.

It was late at night by the time she got to the living room. She could do the bedrooms and the bathroom tomorrow, but tonight she wanted to finish the living room. She vacuumed under all of the furniture. She washed the television screen with glass cleaner. She wiped down all of her knickknacks, the little ornaments she had collected over the years. Then she took the cushions off of the armchairs and vacuumed under them. The couch was next.

There was a box under one cushion, a little velvet box. She picked it up, curiosity biting through her numb exhaustion. She opened it.

Two silver earrings nestled inside, beautiful filigree earrings with teardrop sapphires, the ones she had been admiring for weeks. She wondered how they had come here, and then she knew. Al had brought them in here on Monday, when he had found her on the sofa. He must have meant them as a gift, but elected to hold them back because he didn't want to try to force her out of her unhappiness, because he had finally respected her need to be miserable. Her throat closed. He did care. He did care what she thought and what she needed. He had bought her this beautiful present, and she hadn't even thanked him.

Well, she could thank him one way, at least. There was one thing she could do. Al wouldn't be home until late Monday night. The house was half clean already. If she hurried she could be ready by sunset Sunday. Al wouldn't be home until late Monday night. Al didn't like dead bodies.

She got up and went to the kitchen. She filled a glass with water from the tap and drank. She picked up the telephone and her fingers danced. Eleven numbers. The phone on the other end rang.

Naomi answered. "Hello? Who is this?"

"Ruthie," she said.

"Ruthie! Are you okay?"

"Fine," Ruthie lied. "Fine. Listen, is Michael there?" Michael would take care of everything. He was a lawyer. It was his job.

"Sure… honey, are you sure you're okay? What happened after I left the other day?"

"Nothing. Al ate some supper and he went to bed. He's in Arizona right now, visiting that secret project. Nai, do you think Michael would do me a favor?" Ruthie asked.

"Anything, hon. I'll make sure he does anything you need him too."

"Good. Can I talk to him?" Ruthie smoothed her rumpled sweat-pants. Michael would take care of everything.

"Ruth?" Michael's voice echoed over the line. "Nai says you need a favor?"

"Yes," Ruthie said. "I need you to come here, to the house, first thing Monday morning. I'll let the men at the gates know you're coming. It's very important."

"I have to be at the office on Monday m—" Michael stopped, probably because Naomi was telling him off. He continued. "Sure, Ruth, first thing Monday."

"First thing. Promise?"

"I promise."

"Come to the house. I"ll be waiting. Don't let Nai come with you."

"Okay. You want to tell her that?"

Michael put Naomi back on, and Ruthie told her. She wrung another promise from her brother-in-law. Then she hung up.

Sunday night, she decided. Michael would come first thing Monday morning. Al wouldn't be home until late Monday night. She wouldn't wait up for him.

She put the earrings on the kitchen table and went back to work.

Sunday night.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Michael cradled the phone and scratched his head. His sister-in-law had always been a bit on the enigmatic side, but this was a whole different game. He turned to Naomi, who was settling in the rocking chair and unbuttoning the front of her nightgown so that Sarah could nurse.

"Do you have any idea what that was about?" he asked.

Naomi shook her head. "You'll go, though, won't you?"

"Of course I'll go. I promised Ruthie I'd go." He sat down on the sofa. The clock struck twelve.

"I'm worried about her, Mike," Naomi said. "I don't think she's happy."

"Marriage isn't for everybody," Michael said. "Maybe she made a mistake."

"He drinks too much."

Michael picked up his shot glass full of vodka and began toying with it. Naomi watched him anxiously. Fortunately, the remark didn't hit too close to home. "I've noticed," he said simply.

"I'm scared that he's hurting her."

Michael frowned. "What do you mean? He hits her?"

"I don't know," Naomi said, cuddling her baby closer. "But they don't talk to each other. She doesn't know anything about his family. She thinks maybe he had a sister who died, but she doesn't know. He didn't even tell her he had fought in Vietnam until after they were married."

"Lots of couples take time getting to know each other," Michael said. "Most of them just wait until they do before they run off to get married. When did she meet him again?"

"Christmas night," Naomi said.

"He seems like a nice guy. Funny, good with the kids."

"Not good with Ruthie, though. She's not… she's easily hurt, Mike. I don't want him to hurt her." Naomi hesitated, deciding not to articulate the strange crawling sensation she always got when Al smiled at her. Like someone walking over her grave. She liked him, but there was something about his smile…

"Your sister… don't take this personally, Nai, but she's a bit of an odd duck. If she were in the stands I would swear she was a perjured witness." Michael took a snort of the vodka. "And Calavicci's not so bad. A bit long in the tooth, maybe, but he's a good guy."

"What if he isn't? How would we know if he _was_ beating on her?" Naomi asked anxiously.

"She'd tell us."

"No, I don't think she would," said Naomi unhappily. "Ruthie doesn't like to talk about problems. She's just like Papa that way. Pretend the trouble isn't there, maybe it will go away."

Michael sipped at his liquor again and laughed a little. "I never would have pictured your anti-war fanatic sister marrying a pilot who'd fought over there. It's funny!"

"It's not. What kind of a house is that, split in half by politics?"

Michael shrugged. "The war's over. Time to move on. Maybe Ruthie and Calavicci are the start of a new thing. Opposite sides getting together, making love, not war." He chortled and emptied the shot glass.

"You're drunk," Naomi said coldly.

"Yup!" He put his feet up on the sofa and patted his abdomen with a contented sigh. Every Friday night he got quietly, happily plastered.

"Mike, this is serious. What if he's hurting her?"

"Then she should get a divorce," he said simply.

A thought struck Naomi. Her husband was a wizard in family court. "Do you think that's why she wants to see you? So you can help her get a divorce?"

"Naw, or why couldn't she have me over this weekend?"

"Maybe she wants to talk about it while Al's not around. He works weekdays, training those kids." Naomi shifted Sarah to her other breast. "Mike, promise you'll help her."

"Eagle Scout's honor."

A silence ensued, broken only by the soft suckling noises from the baby. Suddenly Michael sat bolt upright.

"You say he was a pilot?" he said, his eyes narrowing into that keenly intelligent attorney look that won him so much respect in court.

"Al? Yes, he's a pilot," Naomi answered.

"Not now, when he fought in Vietnam."

"Sure, I think so."

Michael got to his feet and left the room. She heard him go into his den. A minute later he emerged, carrying a dusty copy of Time magazine.

"Article on Operation Homecoming," he said, folding it open to a page halfway through. "From May, 1973. You said he hasn't told her about his family. You think he's told her about this?"

He thrust the periodical under Naomi's nose.

She stared, transfixed by the image, horrified but unable to look away.

"Oh, my God," she breathed.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

Al hadn't felt this alive since the splashdown in the middle of the Atlantic. Every muscle seemed taught with unending energy, every brain cell was working overtime. He had only to turn another corner to see something new that excited and fascinated him.

This was what science was supposed to be like! Glistening laboratories, state-of-the-art equipment, a massive team of experts, both military and civilian, functioning together in perfect synchronization, as aware of one another's needs and habits as the best-trained squadron.

He had no security clearance, so there was a limit to where he could go, but even within that limit he couldn't believe what he saw. By the end of the day on Friday he was so exhausted by the sensory overload that he hadn't even wanted a drink before bed. By bedtime Saturday, he knew that this was what he wanted to do. He wanted to take this elegant, streamlined behemoth by the horns and guide it to success, to keep this team functioning and lead them towards the breakthrough that everyone seemed absolutely certain was lurking just around the next corner. That was the only trouble: they were all too optimistic. They needed a pessimist or two to weigh them down before they drifted away into the stratosphere.

He said "or two" because Doctor Eleese was a bit of a wet blanket. A brilliant scientist, there was no denying that, but she had an air of cynicism that went beyond a healthy degree of Devil's Advocate. Luckily she was a genius and she was gorgeous, and those two favorable traits outweighed the other.

On Sunday he began to worry about Ruthie.

He hadn't talked to her at all before leaving. He hadn't explained that he had been angry, and that he had had too much to drink, and that he hadn't meant the things he had said about her family. He liked her family fine, it was just annoying when Naomi came in poking her nose where it wasn't wanted and working against him on trying to win his wife over to the idea of coming out here to Starbright. He wanted this so desperately, and somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind he feared that if it came to a choice between Ruthie and reassignment, he wasn't going to pick Ruthie.

Especially after Wednesday. When Sparks had taxied that plane through the wall of the hangar warehouse, trying to show off a short-runway landing, Al had realized how tired he was of trying to curb these arrogant young hotshots. Al shuddered to think what would have happened to him if he had had a flight instructor as stubborn as himself. He never would have got off the ground. That was Sparks' problem: not post-pubescent posturing, but the fact that he was constantly head-butting with his superior. He needed an instructor who wouldn't bite back, and Al could never be that kind of instructor. He was born a smart mouth, he was going to die a smart mouth, and people with smart mouths shouldn't be making young kids angry and discouraged so that they tried stupid and dangerous things like truncated landings. For his own good and for the trainees' he had to be reassigned as soon as possible, and the only assignment in months that had looked even remotely appealing was Starbright Project.

Then he had come home, tired and filthy and disheartened, to find Naomi there poisoning Ruthie's mind against an idea she already didn't like. It had been too much to handle.

Distance has a way of taking the edge off conflict, though, and now Al was worried that he had hurt Ruthie. She was a sensitive little thing, and she was so scared that people would find out about her illness. Why, he didn't know. Her family wouldn't care. They were good, loving people. They weren't going to turn their backs on her just because she had a few chemical problems. The bottom line, however, was that Ruthie was frightened that they would. From what he had gathered almost nobody knew, just him and a couple of doctors. That she had trusted him enough to tell him burdened him with a certain responsibility to help her. The problem was that he had no idea how to do that.

All through the morning, though, the thought haunted him that she was probably sitting on the sofa, alone and lost in depression, staring off at nothing. He couldn't leave her alone: she was his wife, and somehow this mess was probably his fault.

By noon he had come to his decision.

MacArthur was disappointed. There were acceleration tests scheduled for Monday, but Al reasoned that he had done everything he could to prove his usefulness and impress Doctor Eleese and the rest of the brain trust, and now he needed to go home. He had been married three months, and that wasn't long enough to justify such a lengthy absence. He had done the same thing to Beth, only then it had been six months of sea duty off the coast of Cuba, and look how that had…

No, not Beth. Not Beth. Ruthie. He was flying home to see Ruthie.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

Flying was joy. There were no problems up in the air. None of them could break the cloud cover. It relaxed Al just to know that the grubby, broken world was far away, and that if he wanted to he could stay up here forever… or until the fuel ran out.

He stopped to refuel in Kansas, then again in Kentucky, and made the last hop back to Jersey in record time. He touched down beautifully on the sunset-bathed tarmac at Lakehurst, oblivious to his surroundings. After exchanging a few pleasantries with the men manning the hangar, he made his way towards the training buildings. His 'Vette was waiting for him in his parking spot, and he tossed his kit bag into the trunk before taxiing off towards home.

It was dark by the time he pulled up in front of the bungalow. He recovered his luggage and made his way up to the door. It was locked, no surprises there. Ruthie seemed to share his compulsion. He dug out his keys and stepped into a dark house. Had Ruthie gone to bed already?

He switched on the light in the living room, checking carefully to make sure she wasn't there. Then into the dining room. On the table, Ruthie had laid out her favorite dress, a soft blue concoction with the FDA maximum recommended load of ribbons. Beside it were dark blue pumps, and the sapphire earrings. He smiled. So she had found them. Good. He hadn't wanted to make it look like he was trying to buy her off, but he did want her to have the jewels.

His eyes moved to the bay window and he frowned. The roses were still in their vase. They were dead, hanging limply from their woody stems. It wasn't like Ruthie to leave dead flowers lying around.

He went into the kitchen, leaving a trail of lights behind him. It was empty and perfectly in order. He checked the bathroom and the spare room before opening the door to the master bedroom and switching on the light.

Ruthie was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her back to the door, doing something with her hands. Al approached on cat's feet and bent to kiss her neck.

"Hey, beautiful," he said. "I'm sorry I left like that. I came back early just to prove how sorry I am."

She spun around, eyes wide with alarm. Whiskey from the glass she was holding flew up, drenching his chest and the coverlet. "You!" she cried, shrinking away and trying to hide something under her body. "What are you doing here? You weren't coming back until Monday!"

Al shrugged and grinned. "I got lonely for my little woman and I came home. Miss me?"

He tried to kiss her lips, but she wriggled further away, lying on top of her left hand. Al paused.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"You—you shouldn't be here!" she exclaimed, sounding almost frightened. "You shouldn't!"

"I told you, I missed you so I came back to make up for that fight. What'sa matter? You scared I'll be mad at you for trying the whiskey? It's good stuff. We can share." He curled his hand over hers and bent to drink from the half-empty tumbler.

She pulled it away. "No, don't," she said. He withdrew his hand and sat back, trying to look nonthreatening and grimly determined that if this didn't end in a passionate reconciliation at least it wasn't going to terminate with a violent quarrel.

"Had a bad day?" he asked sympathetically.

"No—why are you here? You aren't coming home until Monday night. Until late Monday night." She watched him warily, like a small animal menaced by a hawk.

Al wasn't sure how to handle that assertion, so he fell back on teasing. "What've you got there?" he asked, reaching for her left hand, the one she was clearly trying to hide.

"No! No!" Ruthie gasped, fighting him.

"Come on, lemme see," Al coaxed, laughing a little as she tried to writhe out of the way of his groping hands. He grabbed her wrist and tried to pry her fingers out of their frantic fist.

"No!" she cried, trying to escape. She desperate, but he was stronger and more agile, and her hand flew open, scattering its contents over the bedspread. Ruthie gasped and went limp, burying her face in the front of Al's shirt. The whiskey tumbler fell from her hand, spilling the remainder of its contents on the bed. Al didn't notice. He was staring at what she had dropped, petrified by the sight.

Pills.

Little yellow tablets had spread in every direction. There had to be two or three dozen, and they had all been in her hand. He gaped numbly, not quite able to process what his mind was telling him.

Ruthie started to tremble against him. In a tiny, broken and almost inaudible voice she mumbled, "Why did you have to come back? Why? Why?"

Al's throat was so tightly constricted that he wasn't sure how the words got out. "What are they?" he croaked, staring at the tablets.

Ruthie shook her head spastically. Al followed the trail of pills with his eyes. There was an empty but neatly capped pharmacy bottle on his pillow. He picked it up and scrutinized the label. Phenobarbital. Why did Ruthie have Phenobarbital? She wasn't epileptic…no, wait, it was a sleeping pill. If she had taken those tablets with that whiskey…

He grabbed her shoulders and sat her up. Her head was lolling limply and her eyes were closed. Her face was a mask of misery. "Ruthie!" he said sharply. "Did you take any of these?"

She didn't answer. She was still shaking under his grip.

"Ruthie! Did you?" Al felt a thrill of panic. What was he going to do if she didn't answer? An ambulance. He needed an ambulance.

"No…" she muttered in defeat, shaking her head mechanically. "No."

Suddenly her eyes opened and she reached out for the pills, trying to gather them up. "No, you don't!" Al cried, grabbing her arms and pinning them to her sides. She struggled against him.

"Let me go, let me go!" she shrieked, flailing and trying to throw him off. "I want them, I want them!"

"No, Ruthie. You don't want this, not really," Al said emphatically, holding her closer to him.

"No, I do! I want them! You don't understand! I need them!"

"You don't, you don't," he said, still grappling with her. "Were you going to take those all at once, Ruth?"

She refused to look at him. She twisted and arched her back and fought his grip viciously, but Al had held his own in worse scuffles than this and she couldn't get free. He got one of her arms around behind her back, then the other. He was able to hold both her wrists with one hand there, leaving the other free to grab her chin and turn her towards him. She screwed her eyes tightly closed and tried to wrench away.

"Ruthie," he said, his voice firm and commanding. "Ruthie, calm down and talk to me."

Her eyes flickered over his face, stopping abruptly when their gazes locked. Then suddenly she was sobbing, her face buried on his neck. He released his hold on her arms and embraced her, supporting her as she shook with sobs. He rocked back and forth, tracing circles onto her back. Her hair was loose and tangling itself around both of them. Her body shuddered with the force of her agony as she wept and wept and wept.

"Ruthie, Ruthie," he murmured, not knowing what else to say. "Oh, Ruthie…"

Finally she fell silent, drawing in shallow, fragile breaths. He gathered her onto his lap, still rocking. Her nightgown was drenched with sweat. He kissed her clammy forehead.

"Ruthie, baby, talk to me," he said, staring at the wallpaper because he couldn't focus on her face.

"Why did you have to come back?" she whispered. "Everything was going to be perfect."

"Perfect?" Al echoed.

"All wrong…"

"Ruthie, did you take any of those pills?"

"Going to…"

"But you didn't," he said, a wave of palpable relief washing over him. "You didn't."

"No… why did you have to come back?" she wailed desolately, hammering his chest with her fist. "Why?"

She went limp again, gasping raggedly. Al couldn't think. His mind was numb. He couldn't believe it. He had gone away, and Ruthie had tried… she had been going to… He shuddered.

"I want them," Ruthie whispered, one hand snaking under his arms and groping for the pills. "I want to sleep."

"No, you don't," Al said, gently because he didn't want to set her off again. He was scared he might hurt her. Panic made him careless, it was easy to get carried away. The thing to do was to stay calm. Both of them had to stay calm. "What you want is a warm drink and a good heart-to-heart."

Ruthie shook her head. "Sleep," she said hypnotically. "Sleep forever."

"No," Al said firmly. "Come on, let's go to the kitchen. I'll make some hot chocolate and we can talk about it."

"No…" Ruthie tried again to lunge for the tablets, but she was exhausted from her struggling and her crying and who knew what else, and she merely flopped over Al's arm.

He got onto shaking legs and helped her up. She stumbled, but leaned against his shoulder and meekly allowed herself to be led into the next room, probably because it was easier to comply than it was to fight. Just like last Sunday night, when she had obeyed his every prompt as if she couldn't think or act for herself.

He sat her down at the kitchen table, pushing the hair off of her face. "You just sit there, Ruthie, I'll fix us something to drink," he said, going to the refrigerator and taking out a carton of milk.

Afraid to take his eyes off her, he moved around, taking out the shallow saucepan, putting it on the stove to heat, finding cocoa, sugar, cloves and vanilla. Ruthie sat like a waxwork, her eyes vacant and fixed on infinity. Al moved the wire whisk through the milk so that it wouldn't skin over, watching her anxiously, as if she could make another attempt on her life before his eyes.

Moving from the pantry to the stove he caught a glimpse of a mass of blue on the still-illuminated dining room table. A convulsive shudder wracked his body. Ruthie's favorite dress, with matching pumps and the sapphire earrings. She had laid them out to be buried in. He focused his mind on the task at hand with far more vehemence than such a mundane occupation warranted.

When the beverage was ready he poured it into two mugs and carried them to the table. Setting one in front of his wife, he sat across from her. She didn't move. He reached out and bodily curled her hand around the mug. She took in a sharp breath of surprise at the contact with the heat. Her fingers closed on the handle and she lifted it unsteadily to her mouth. Her white throat rippled as she swallowed.

Al tasted his own. Not bad. Could really use a slug of scotch, but Ruthie didn't like it when he drank, and God knew she needed care right now. He swallowed, then took hold of her left hand, which was lying limp on the Formica tabletop.

"Ruthie, do you want to tell me about this?" he asked.

She shook her head.

He decided to try a different tack. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

She stared at the liquid in her mug. It was exactly the color of her eyes, Al noticed, and about as animated, too. "Why did you do it?" she asked softly.

Shouldn't _he_ be the one asking that? Al thought fleetingly. "Do what?" he queried.

"You stopped me. Why did you stop me?"

He fought to keep his composure. "You didn't really want to do it, Ruthie," he said. "You didn't really want to take all those pills, did you?"

She hung her head and her hair fell down over it. "I don't… I don't know," she whispered.

"That means no, Ruthie. If there's any doubt—any doubt at all—you don't really want to do it."

"But I do," she breathed.

"Why?"

"Everything is wrong," she mumbled.

"You don't want to move to Arizona?" Al asked. "Is that why you tried this?"

She glanced at him for the briefest moment. "No," she said flatly.

"Is it because we had a fight?" Al asked.

"No."

"Because I like to drink?"

"No."

"Is it something somebody said when we were home for the Bar Mitzvah?"

"No."

"Naomi?"

"No… _no_." She sighed wretchedly. "It's nothing anybody said or did, it's not you, it's just…" Ruthie slumped forward on the table, burying her head in her hands. "You wouldn't understand."

The despair in her voice made Al's stomach wrench. He wanted to gather her up in his arms and promise that everything was going to be all right. At the same time, however, nothing would have made him happier than running away and leaving this nightmare behind him. She had tried to kill herself tonight. If he had been just a few minutes later, he would have walked in to find her dead in the bedroom. _Dead_. His wife. Little Ruthie. The whole thing was too terrible to comprehend.

He couldn't flee. He knew numbly that he couldn't flee.If he did she might try again. He had to get her to talk this through. Maybe if she talked it through she would come around. At least he might be able to understand what had made her think that suicide was a viable solution.

"Try to help me understand," he said.

"I… I can't…" A silent sob shook her.

Al stood up and rounded the table, turning her chair. He knelt before her and peered under the curtain of hair. He could only just see her eyes. "Ruthie," he whispered; "you have to talk about this. I'm not going to let you kill yourself."

"K-kill?" she gasped, strange hysteria filtering into her expression. She looked up, terrified. "Kill m-mys—I tried to kill myself! I finally tried to—oh, God, oh, God…"

She was in his arms again, shaking and whimpering. He fell back onto the floor and held her, not knowing what else to do. When at last she fell silent again he spoke. "Tell me why you wanted to," he said. "Was it something I did?"

"No!" she said hoarsely, sitting up and looking at him. "No. No. It isn't anybody else, it's me. I don't deserve… I don't…" She laid her head on his shoulder and exhaled heavily. "I'm tired, Al," she said. "I want to go lie down."

"Lie down… of course…" Somehow Al got them both to their feet. He started towards the bedroom, but then he halted. The bed was covered with Phenobarbital tablets and wet with liquor. He couldn't take her in there. He led Ruthie down the hall to the guest room, and eased her onto the bed. He had to clean up. In the morning when everyone would want to forget this had happened, there couldn't be reminders strewn all over the house. He turned for the door.

Ruthie caught his arm. "Don't go…" she whispered. "Don't leave me. I'm afraid."

He didn't ask what she was afraid of. He took off his boots and stripped to his shorts, peeling off the whiskey-soaked uniform and leaving it in a crumpled heap of the floor. He crawled under the blankets next to her. Ruthie crept close, like a child seeking comfort in the wake of horrific night terrors. Her eyes were glazed and empty, and her voice distant and vague.

"I'm tired," she said. "So tired."

Al groped for her pulse. It was strong and steady. Her breathing was even. Whatever was wrong with her was in her mind, not in her body.

He would lie here until he was sure she was asleep, he decided, and then go and clean up.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN 

Al stretched out, dimly contented and not quite awake. There was no alarm jerking him out of his early-morning complacency. He remembered he wasn't expected on duty today, since he had come home twenty-four hours early. He had the whole day to luxuriate at home and make up to Ruthie, compensate for the last ten days.

He came back to reality with a jolt of terror. Ruthie had tried to kill herself last night. He had meant to get up and straighten up the house, but he must have fallen asleep. Now he was in bed alone. Oh, God.

He got out of bed and stumbled into the hall. Had she tried again? Succeeded?

His knees went weak with relief when he heard sounds from the bathroom: running water and soft snuffling sounds. He knocked on the door.

"Ruthie?" he said.

There was no reply. He knocked again. "Ruthie, it's Al. Please open the door."

The water stopped, but the expected exit did not follow. "Ruthie, open the door," Al coaxed gently.

The lock clicked back and she pulled the door open. For a moment, Al couldn't speak. She bore little resemblance to the woman he had expected to see. She was pale and peaked, her eyes rimmed with shadows so dark that they looked like bruises. Her hair was tangled and damp, and water stood out on her face and beaded her eyelashes. The front of her nightgown was wet, and in other places stained with the memory of whiskey. She stared at the ground, unwilling or unable to look him in the eye.

"Morning," Al said hoarsely, finding his voice but no words. Afraid of her reaction but not sure what else to do he held out his arms. She lurched forward into his embrace, hiding her face against his shoulder and wrapping her arms weakly around his waist. He held her tightly to him, stroking the back of her head.

"Let's go sit down," he murmured; "and we can talk about it."

She exhaled heavily, which he took as assent, and he led her into the living room to settle them both on the sofa. Ruthie didn't relinquish her hold on him, nor did she raise her had.

"Ruthie, how long have you been awake?" Al asked, hoping she would be the one to bring up what had happened last night.

She shook her head and tightened her grip. Al didn't know what to do. She had to talk about it, but he had been so adamant that he wasn't going to act like any damned shrink. She was hurting and she needed help, but he didn't know how to help her. Suicide attempts weren't something people talked about. If they could help it they didn't even think about them. He had seen men try and even succeed, but Ruthie's situation was completely different. Here there was help, if you knew where to seek it, and out there there was always doubt, too. There were times when death truly was better than existence, but that couldn't be the case for Ruthie, no matter what she thought. The person who was feeling suicidal always thought it was the only way out, but they weren't always right, and Ruthie couldn't be. Somehow he had to reach through the darkness and help her see that, but how? How was that even possible?

Her hand had moved from his back to his chest, and she was tracing his favorite scar.

"Al?" she whispered, rubbing gently up and down the old ridge. "How did this happen?"

At least she was talking. "That?" he said. "Well, I did Macbeth the first summer after high school—"

"Who did you play?" she interrupted softly.

He smiled a little. "Young Siward." The clock struck seven.

"_No, nor more fearful_," she mumbled, feeding him a cue. He'd forgotten she was an English major.

"_Thou liest, abhorréd tyrant! With my sword I'll prove the lie thou speak'st_," Al quoted back. "We used real foils, and the tip came off Macbeth's and got me good."

She made a sound deep in her throat that might have been a tiny laugh. Her fingers crept across his chest to a fine white line running from his left shoulder into his armpit. "What about this one?" she asked.

He never talked about his scars. It wasn't worth it. Now, however, he was just grateful to have Ruthie thinking about something other than her own misery, and anyhow he didn't have to be specific. "A nylon rope cut me," he said.

"Parachute harness?" she asked quietly.

"Something like that." Nylon was expensive and only used at the Hilton, where nothing was too good for their guests. The thing about nylon was that it wouldn't break; even a fine piece could carry a considerable load. It could hold your whole weight from a cord or two for days on end, and the thinner it was the easier your skin split under the pressure.

"This one?" Ruthie asked, finding a broad mark on his abdomen.

"That was an operation," he said, glad of the change of pace. "There was this nurse in recovery who liked to sing while she changed the dressings. The guy in the next bed used to moan and thrash around whenever she did. I never did figure out whether he did that because he wasn't musically inclined or because he was."

Ruthie definitely laughed a little this time. "That's a nice story," she said. "Was it your appendix?"

"No, wrong side," Al said, moving her over a little and pointing at an ancient pucker in his right lower quadrant. "That was my appendix. First major scar I got. I was the envy of the orphanage for a couple of weeks with that one."

"Orphanage?" Ruthie echoed in consternation, looking up at him for the first time that morning.

Al frowned. "Yeah, I guess I never told you that," he said. "I was in an orphanage off and on from just before my seventh birthday until I finished high school."

"How did your parents die?" she asked.

"My father got cancer," Al said.

"Your mother?"

"Sort of left. Couldn't deal with us kids, I guess." Al focused on the dormant television set.

Ruthie's hand found its way to his cheek. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Why? Did you talk her into it?" Al asked wryly, turning back to her and grinning. "It was a long time ago. I learned a lot in the orphanage I never would have in a normal family."

Ruthie bit her lip and started fingering his scars again. "You said 'us kids'," she said. Had he? Damn. "Your little sister?"

"Who said I had a sister?" Al inquired woodenly.

"There's a picture you keep in your nightstand. The little boy is you, the little girl… she had Down's syndrome, didn't she?"

"Uhm."

"How did she die?"

"Did I say she was dead?"

"If she isn't, where is she?"

"Pneumonia," he said in defeat. God forgive him for lying to a suicidal woman: he didn't even know the truth himself.

"I'm—"

"Don't say you're sorry, it wasn't your fault," Al said, his voice coming out harder than he had meant it to. "You can't blame yourself for the world's problems like that, it isn't healthy. She went straight to heaven."

"What was her name?" queried Ruthie.

It almost choked him to articulate it. "Trudy."

"I'm… I don't know what'd I'd do if Rachel died," Ruthie whispered.

"What would Naomi and Dina do if you died?" Al asked gently. He immediately wished he hadn't, because Ruthie shuddered and hid her face again.

"Why do I have to do what's right for them instead of what's right for me?" she mumbled, almost inaudibly.

"I don't know," he admitted. That was one hell of a good question.

Silence swelled up between them. Finally, Ruthie spoke again.

"Al, please, tell me who she is," she begged, cuddling closer.

"Who?" he asked, although he had a sickening feeling that he knew exactly who.

"Beth," she said. Full points for clairvoyance.

"Ruthie, I—"

The doorbell rang.

Al frowned. "Who would be visiting at this hour of the morning?" he asked, relief at the death row reprieve not quite sufficient to quell the investigative instinct.

Ruthie sat bolt upright. "Oh, my God!" she cried in dismay. "Michael!"


	20. Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY 

Naomi worried too much, Michael thought as he stood on the doorstep of the Calavicci house. He wouldn't have been certain he had the right address, except for the Corvette parked on the curb. There was something not quite right about a forty-five-year-old man who drove a teenager's car. It wasn't dignified. Mind you, Calavicci was a fun guy, but dignity wasn't his strong point, so maybe the Corvette was appropriate after all.

Michael didn't really believe he hit his wife, that was for damn sure. That was Naomi being paranoid again, prejudiced against the guy because he liked his liquor. Naomi was a real zealot when it came to teetotaling, almost as bad with it as Ruth and Aaron were with peace. That had been an embarrassment: a sister-in-law who spent her free time waving "make love, not war" picket signs and bellowing "Eighteen today, dead tomorrow!" and a brother-in-law too cowardly to serve his country. Now that Aaron was long gone and forgotten by everybody but his sentimental sisters and Ruthie had settled down and married a military man Michael had just started to relax out of the defensive mode he had been in for the last ten years. The New Jersey legal community was very small and very jingoistic.

Now Naomi wanted to stir up trouble, and being who she was she couldn't do that without dragging him into it. It wasn't that Michael blamed her for worrying about her strange sister. Ruth _was_ an odd duck, there was just no better way to put it, and she really did exude the aura of a woman playing some very dangerous game in deadly secret. Years as a divorce attorney had given him instincts about women that most me would kill for, and he knew Ruthie wasn't playing with a full deck. He just kind of resented having this whole problem foisted on him by his wife.

The lack of communication that seemed to worry Nai every bit as much as the possibility of physical abuse didn't phase him. From where he sat, good communication was a bonus, and nothing that anybody had any right to expect. He had seen plenty of failed marriages where the couples had known absolutely everything about each other, and plenty of successful marriage where husband and wife were mutual enigmas. Look at his own marriage: going on sixteen years, six terrific kids, and how much did he and Nai talk, when they weren't bickering?

The fact that Calavicci probably hadn't told Ruthie the truth about his time in Vietnam sickened Naomi, but Michael found it exquisitely ironic. The whole marriage was one fabulous cosmic joke, he had said it from the start. Ruthie the anti-war Nazi and Calavicci the Air Pirate, dropper of napalm and bomber of pagodas, poster child for the brutal treatment of captured Americans by the evil, _evil_ Vietcong that the Doves had loved to defend. Knowing firsthand what marriage to a Zelnik girl entailed, Michael was more than ready to give Calavicci the benefit of the doubt.

If, however, he _was_ beating on his wife Michael was going to crucify him as only a lawyer could.

Michael depressed the doorbell a second time, and was almost immediately aware of movement on the other side of the barrier before him. The deadbolt retracted audibly and the door swung in just far enough to reveal Calavicci's head and a thin column of bare torso.

"Michael," he said coolly, not looking the least bit surprised. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm here to see Ruthie," Michael asserted.

The Naval officer didn't miss a beat. "She's indisposed."

"She asked me to come," Michael said, leaning subtly on the door. The man inside was holding it firmly.

"She changed her mind. She doesn't want to see you."

That was a classic red flag. Maybe Naomi was right. Michael fixed his brother-in-law with a hard look. "Let her tell me that."

Calavicci's expression began to petrify equably. If anyone was qualified to meet a lawyer's gaze it was a military man. "She doesn't need this right now," he said firmly. "Go away."

Not likely. "I was out of bed at five to drive out here, and I'm not leaving until I talk to Ruth," Michael said. Then he threw his weight against the door. Calavicci was strong, but Michael was six inches taller and about sixty pounds heavier. The smaller man was forced back into the house.

"Get out!" he ordered, transposing himself between Michael and the living room.

"Too late," Michael said, closing the door behind him. "Ruthie?"

He could see her over her husband's bare shoulder, sitting on the living room sofa in a dirty nightgown, staring down into her lap. Michael sidestepped around Calavicci, who tried to stop him as best he could without actually resorting to physical contact. Good to see the sailor had some sense. You don't try to pull battery on a lawyer.

"Ruth?" Michael said, approaching the woman. Her hair was matted, her face was unnaturally pale. He couldn't see her eyes from this angle. "Good morning."

Calavicci came around to stand beside her, his stance defensive—or perhaps menacing. He cut a fairly daunting figure, actually, for being five foot seven, barefoot and almost naked. Michael paused at the spectacle, unable to help taking in the pale scars on the exposed chest. He noticed inanely that Calavicci had got his dog tags back, probably replaced when he was repatriated. Looking at him like this, it was easier to see the resemblance to the photograph in Time.

Michael forced his attention back to Ruthie, who seemed to be studiously ignoring him. "You wanted to see me?" he asked.

"No," Ruthie said, her voice lacking all affect. "I wanted you to see me."

Calavicci's hand spasmed and he gripped her shoulder. "Just tell him to go away, Ruthie," he said quietly.

"I don't need you now," Ruthie said, still not raising her head. "Go away."

Michael scrutinized her with eyes of experience. This wasn't right. She was trying to hide something, and Calavicci was trying to help her hide it—or making sure he prompted her to hide it. Mike was beginning to get a gut feeling that there was something fishy about this marriage after all.

"Why did you want me out here for?" Michael asked.

"Nothing," Ruthie told him. Calavicci's hold on her shoulder tightened almost imperceptibly. She glanced up at him. The flesh around her eyes was purple.

For a horrible moment Michael felt irrational rage knotting his stomach, thinking that they were bruises. Just like that bastard Chester Raleigh, the Air Force pilot who had beat up his own sister and wasn't doing a whole lot of flying any more. Then he realized the marks were shadows, as if Ruthie hadn't slept in days… which might or might not be Calavicci's fault, but you couldn't jump to conclusions.

"I don't think that's true, is it?" Michael said diplomatically. "Maybe if your… husband wanted to go put some clothes on we could talk about it."

The faintest shadow of a flush flared briefly across Calavicci's uncharacteristically white cheekbones, but he made no other physical indication of embarrassment, continuing with his unabashed stance and not relinquishing his hold on Ruthie. "I've got a better idea," he said. "Why don't you pack up and high-tail it back to Trenton, and Ruthie can call you if she decides she has anything to say."

Ruthie still didn't seem to be taking any real interest in the proceedings. A lifetime of association with her family gave Michael the weapon he needed to manipulate her spin on the situation. "I've just spent a good ninety minutes on the road," he said. "Think I could get a little refreshment before I go?"

It worked like magic. Ruthie got to her feet, instantly anxious. "Of course," she said. "Of course. I'll… I'll make coffee. I think I've got some blueberry muffins…"

Calavicci put a hand on her other shoulder too. "I'll do it," he said. "You go and freshen up, I'll take care of the coffee."

Ruthie shook her head. "I'll do it, Al; I want to do it," she said. "Go get dressed. I can do it."

Something very strange flickered through the Italian's dark eyes, but it was gone before Michael could interpret it. "I know you can," Calavicci said. Then he turned the first stirrings of a glare on Michael. "Won't you have a seat?" he asked, gesturing at an armchair with a thin smile.

Michael grinned tightly and sat, holding up his palms to indicate that he surrendered and wasn't going anywhere. Calavicci escorted Ruthie through the room, and they parted by the hallway, she bound for the kitchen and he for the master bedroom. Michael sat in silence for about a minute and a half, listening to the domestic sounds coming from the kitchen. From where he sat he could just see the dining room, where the lights were burning and a horrific blue dress covered most of the table.

Then Calavicci came out of the bedroom, buttoning the front of his shirt awkwardly, hampered by something he was holding with the three secondary fingers of his left hand. He moved into the kitchen. Curiosity piqued, Michael got to his feet and moved silently into the dining room.

"You forgot to take these last night," Calavicci was saying very quietly. "Should you take two if you miss a dose, or four?"

"Two," Ruthie murmured, her voice equally hushed and almost frightened. Michael came around the corner just in time to see Calavicci put two white tablets between Ruthie's teeth and hold a glass to her lips so that she could swallow. She tried a shaky smile, then turned away, busying herself with the coffee grounds. Calavicci tucked something into his breast pocket, and spotted Michael.

"Can I help you?" he asked coldly.

Michael put on his most sycophantic smile. "Not at all. I just wanted to see if there was anything I could help Ruth with." He moved into the room and smiled at his sister-in-law. "Birth control?" he asked conversationally.

Ruthie stared at him in horror. Calavicci looked ready to murder him. Before he could speak the woman found her voice. "Uh—no. No, sleeping pills."

"First thing in the morning? Aren't they normally taken at bedtime?" Michael asked before he could catch himself. Not a good idea to show your ignorance.

"These are special sleeping pills," Calavicci said firmly, putting a hand on Ruthie's arm. She backed against him, nodding mutely. "And I don't think it's any of your business, is it?"

This defensive attitude was new. Calavicci had always been gregarious, outgoing and amicable. Now he was behaving… cagily, to say the least. As a rule, Michael didn't trust men who acted one way in public and another way within the confines of their own home. Michael smiled again. "That's for Ruthie to decide."

Calavicci's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked sharply.

Michael shrugged. "I'm sure I don't know."

Ruthie turned and put one hand on her husband's chest. "Al," she whispered. "Al, are my… things still lying around in the bedroom?"

His lips grew taught at the edges and a shadow infiltrated his expression as he nodded.

"Would you…" Ruthie bobbed her head in a manner that was obviously meant to communicate some request that she didn't feel able to articulate. Calavicci nodded again, looking paler still than before, and moved towards the bedroom with one last wary glance at Michael.

Seeing his chance, he swooped in, grabbing Ruthie's left shoulder before she could evade him and bending to look her in the eye. "Why are you on sleeping pills?" he asked.

She closed her eyes.

"Why, Ruth?"

She swallowed hard. When she spoke her voice was so low that the words were hardly audible. "I… Al… uh… he sings," she said. "He sings _Volare_ in his sleep."

"_Volare_?" Michael said skeptically. Ruthie nodded. "So you weren't on those pills until after you married him?"

"Not the sleeping pills, no, I wasn't," Ruthie mumbled vaguely. She tried to pull away, her arm sliding through his fingers. When his hand reached her wrist she flinched reflexively.

Instantly suspicious, Michael looked down. Hideous purple bruises marred her lower arm, dark fingerprint-shaped blotches where _someone_ had grabbed her wrist and her elbow. No guesses who.

He felt his heart grow cold with rage. The bastard _was_ beating on her. Any intention of telling Ruthie about the photo from Time flew out the window. It would makeone hell of a dramatic moment during the divorce proceedings. Emotional abuse. Yeah, veterans were supposed to be bad for emotional abuse.

"Ruthie, maybe you should come and stay with Nai and I for a few days," Michael said. Ruthie frowned blankly at him. He didn't want to push her: she'd only deny it. Lucy had, now that he thought about it. Damn, he should have listened to Naomi. "The kids'd love to spend time with you."

Ruthie shuddered and pulled her arm out of his grasp. "No, thanks," she murmured. "I'll just get the coffee on."

Calavicci could be back at any second; it depended what he was picking up in the bedroom. "You shouldn't worry about what your husband thinks," Michael said hastily. "You have to do what's right for you, not him."

Another convulsion ran through her body. She started to measure out water. "Please go and sit down," she said. "I'll just finish up in here."

"But Ruth—"

She turned swiftly to look at him, her eyes suddenly very expressive. "Al and I really need some time alone, Michael," she said firmly. "Please, I'd like you to leave."

He couldn't leave her alone with an abusive drinker. Michael shook his head. "No way, sis," he said.

Ruthie closed her eyes. "Please," she repeated, very slowly and clearly; "I'd like you to leave."

For a moment he contemplated arguing further, but that might upset her and would probably do more harm than good in the long run.

"All right," he said. "I'll come back in a couple of days." And he'd bring the preliminary paperwork. The sooner Ruthie was out of this relationship, the better. He gave her a quick hug that she didn't reciprocate and started for the door. She followed him. He turned on the stoop.

"You need anything, call me. I want to help, Ruthie. I'll be here within two hours."

She forced her lips into a wan travesty of a smile. "Thanks, Mike," she said. "Drive carefully."

"Sure thing," Michael said, turning towards his car.

All the long drive back to Trenton, he was constructing the case in his head.


	21. Chapter TwentyOne

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Ruthie closed the door and shot to the deadbolt. Her legs felt suddenly weak and she stumbled to the sofa. She buried her head in her hands.

For a little while there, talking to Al about his life before Michael had show up with his cruel reminder of the night before, Ruthie had almost forgotten what had happened—what she had almost done. A wave of terror like the one that had assailed her last night in the kitchen washed over her, making her shrink in on herself.

She had tried to go through with it; she had actually tried to go through with it. All those times in college when she had told herself that it wasn't so bad, that they were just thoughts, that she wasn't really going to ever try anything, and last night she had tried! She had, and the idea had terrified her. The darkness was more real because she had actually meant to turn the thoughts into reality.

Ruthie remembered crying, and throwing herself on Al. He had just held her. He hadn't lectured her or demanded what was wrong, the way that Mama would have. He hadn't made her tell him out loud what must be painfully obvious without words, the way that Doctor Tamblyn would have. Nor had he lied to her and told her everything would be all right, the way Naomi would have. He had just held her, as if he knew that all she needed was someone to let her know that it was okay to cry, that she was allowed to be miserable. That was how Papa had always made her feel, too. Funny to think that Al and Papa could be just the same that way, they were so different in all other respects…

She loved him, and she didn't want to hurt him, but what choice did she have? There was no other way out. Suicide was the only solution. She couldn't fix the problems because they weren't real. If her life had really been terrible she could have done something about it. If Al had been a man who hit her or abused her she could have filed for a divorce. As it was, her life seemed perfectly fine: she had a large, supportive family, plenty of money, a nice little house. Al was a cheerful and usually considerate man. The problem wasn't external. The whole universe was skewed into darkness and futility, and even the memory of the time not so long ago when she had been level and the world had been normal seemed like an irrational hallucination.

Logic told her that this wasn't the case: there had been good times, even great times, and there would be again. Logic didn't hold any weight, though. She knew she had never been happy and would never be happy. At least when she was dead she wouldn't have to pretend anymore. It was the pretending that was the worst: lying to her family, her husband and herself. She was just as bad as Al, hiding, lying, evading. That had to stop. It had to stop now, and there was only one way to stop it.

She couldn't let him be the one to find her body, though. She had realized that last night, when she had awakened to find him asleep, and no one to stop her. She could have tried it again, but then Al would have had to wake up to find her dead in the next room. Al didn't like dead bodies. Dead bodies frightened him. Even Papa had said that. Even Papa knew it. She couldn't let him be the one to find him. She loved him; she didn't want to hurt him. Even if he had probably married her just because he wanted to sleep with her and couldn't any other way, he would be hurt if he had to be the one to find her. He might even think that it was his fault, although it wasn't. Ruthie loved Al, even if he didn't love her. She couldn't hurt him like that. If she couldn't make sure that someone else would find her body, then she couldn't kill herself, not until she was sure Al wouldn't find her.

A gentle hand came down on her shoulder and interrupted the thoughts of despair. "Where's Mister Naomi?" Al asked.

"I made him go away," Ruthie said flatly.

Al climbed over the back of the sofa and slid down next to her. "Good girl," he said, wrapping his arms around her. She leaned into the soft cotton cocoon of his shirt. He pressed his cheek against the crown of her head. "Ruthie," he murmured; "Ruthie, can you do something for me?"

"What?" she whispered. If she was willing to stay alive for him, she was willing to do anything for him. He had covered so well when Michael had questioned her about the lithium… he respected her secret and he really cared how she felt. He really did, even though he could never understand.

"I want you to go have a bath and get dressed, and then you and I are going to go for a drive."

She sat up. "I have to make breakfast," she protested, feeling the stirrings of early training.

Al kissed her temple. "I'll make breakfast," he said firmly. "You go have a nice hot bath."

"We could have a bath together," she murmured, surprised to stumble upon the memory of something that never made her sad.

Al laughed hollowly. "I don't think that's what either of us needs right now, do you?"

Ruthie sighed. She couldn't blame him. "I guess not," she murmured, slipping out of his grasp and shuffling to the bedroom in search of her robe.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

She bathed in water as hot as she could bear, scrubbing until her skin was red and tender as if by doing so she could wash away the darkness inside. She couldn't. She still wanted to die, and it discouraged her that nothing she tried would ever be as perfect as it could have been yesterday, if only Al hadn't come home and stopped her. Now she would have to try again, somehow, and even if she could be sure he wouldn't find her body it might be weeks, or months, or even years before she worked up the courage to go through with it. The thought of feeling like this for years without end shook her with a dry, painful sob.

She went to the bedroom and attacked her hair with a comb. The tangles snagged and pulled and brought tears to smart in her eyes, but she only pulled harder. External pain distracted from internal desolation.

When at last she emerged, clad in a blue sweater and a pair of jeans that were a holdover from college, she found Al putting the finishing touches on breakfast. He had made an omelet, and buttered some toast, and somehow he had scared up two glasses of orange juice. The other Ruth Zelnik would have been impressed at his domestic skills, and gratified at the attention. This one scarcely glanced at the food.

Ruthie had no appetite, but Al was persistent. He reasoned, cajoled, wheedled, and finally picked up her fork and fed her like a child. Somehow she ate everything he had put on her plate.

Then Al dumped the dirty dishes in the sink and herded her out to his car before she could muster any protest. They rode in silence, Ruthie dozing fitfully in her seat. She woke up from blessed oblivion to find Al pulling up in the parking lot of Trenton Psychiatric.

A band of dread closed around Ruthie's heart. He was going to have her committed! She had tried to kill herself and now he was going to have them lock her up!

"What's wrong?" Al asked, his voice tinged with concern and perhaps a little bit of alarm as he looked at her face.

"I won't go!" Ruthie cried. "I won't—I'm not crazy! I'm not!"

Al gripped her shoulders as she began to hyperventilate. "Ruthie! Ruthie, calm down. Just calm down," he said. His firm, level voice forced her breathing to even out. She fixed wide eyes on his earnest expression. "Ruthie, no one is saying you're crazy. This is Doctor Tamblyn's hospital. You know that. When I called to see if he could fit you in this morning they told me you already had a ten-thirty appointment. Remember?"

Ruthie did remember. The second and fourth Monday of every month she saw Doctor Tamblyn. It used to be once a week, and before that every three days, but she had been even for so long… "When did you call him?" she asked suspiciously.

"When I was in the bedroom picking up the… your pills. I didn't know who else to call, Ruthie. I don't know what to do, here."

She didn't know if she trusted him, but she didn't have much choice. She let him lead her into the building. Once inside, however, he halted. She looked at him, confused.

"I don't know the way," he explained.

Her anxieties came out in a terse giggle. Of course he didn't, how would he? "Upstairs," she said, leading the way.

Al had timed their arrival perfectly. Doctor Tamblyn was standing at the nurses' station making notes on somebody's chart. He looked up as they entered the ward and smiled, approaching.

"Good morning, Ruthie," he said. "You must be Al Calavicci?"

"My husband," Ruthie whispered, clinging possessively to his arm. Tamblyn nodded and shook hands with Al.

"We'll just go through to my office," he said, turning back to Ruthie. "Mister Calavicci can wait here while we talk."

"Captain," Ruthie corrected.

"Al," Al amended over her.

"Captain Al," Tamblyn said, compromising. "Go right through, Ruthie, and have a seat."

Ruthie knew the way well, but Al didn't seem very happy with the arrangement. He stopped Tamblyn before he could follow her. "Listen, Doctor…"

Tamblyn shook his head. "Ruthie and I have an excellent working relationship, Captain Calavicci. She's perfectly safe with me."

It was true, Ruthie thought as she stepped into the sunny corner room. This was the only place in the world where she was completely safe. Doctor Tamblyn came in behind her and closed the door, moving back so that she could lock it. He took off his lab coat. He was only eight years older than she was, and had been new to the hospital when she had come into emergency at four in the morning at the end of her second year of university and begged him either to help her or to find her a gun. Since then he had been more of a friend than a doctor. If anybody could understand, it would be him.

She sat down in the armchair, and as always he took the couch. There was a Rubik's cube on the coffee table, and she picked it up. She liked to have something to do with her hands while they talked, and Doctor Tamblyn never forgot that.

He put a tape into the recorder and leaned forward with his arms on his knees. "Now, Ruthie," he said gently; "would you like to tell me what happened last night?"


	22. Chapter TwentyTwo

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Al paced the floor in front of the nurses' station. They had been in there for an hour and a half already. Any other woman and he would have been worried about the antics going on behind the door. As it was it was Ruthie, and his concern was what kind of hell that brain-eating psycho was putting her through. He never would have brought her here, but he had absolutely no idea what else to do. He was good at the moment of crisis, but in fallout he was useless.

Michael's arrival had only made matters worse. Al had got on fairly well with his brother-in-law until that morning—not as well as he did with Dina's husband, but you didn't need to be a genius to see the logic behind that one. This morning, however, he had seen a whole new side to the man: an assertive, overconfident side, demanding and interrogative, listening only so he could twist the situation to his own advantage. In short, he had been acting exactly like a lawyer.

A nurse wearing powder-pink cotton scrubs (didn't nurses wear uniforms anymore?) approached him.

"Mister Calveckie?" she asked.

"Calavicci," he corrected reflexively, hardly pausing in his stride.

"Would you mind sitting down?" she asked. "It isn't easy to talk to a moving target."

Irritated by her complacent tone, Al sat. The woman took a chair near him. "Much better," she said. "Now, why don't you tell me what happened last night?"

Al looked her over, noticing almost academically that she had a pretty good body under those less-than-flattering clothes. "Quite frankly, nurse, I don't think that's any of your business."

She smiled radiantly. "Actually, it's Doctor, Mr. Calavicci. Doctor Alisha Fitzhenri, M.D., Ph.D. I'm one of the psychiatrists on staff here.

On a better day Al would have apologized for his assumption and turned on the charm. As it was, however, he was tired, irate, and starting to get the horrible, confined feeling that he always got in hospitals. Besides, he had never had much use for shrinks.

"In that case it's Captain Calavicci," he said coldly, reaching inside his collar and dangling his dog tags. "United States Navy."

Her smile didn't alter one iota. "My apologies, Captain. That information isn't on Ruth's file."

Neither, apparently, was her name. "Everybody calls her Ruthie."

"She isn't a patient of mine," Doctor Fitzhenri said. "But Doctor Tamblyn isn't going to have time today to talk to you himself, so he asked me to. Now, Captain, it's very important that we hear your version of events. Ruth's—Ruthie's is likely to be a little muddled."

As quickly and succinctly as he could, Al told her what had happened. She listened, pausing now and then to make a note on her clipboard. When he was finished she nodded gravely and held his eyes with hers.

"It's important to understand, Captain Calavicci, that what happened is nobody's fault," she said.

"I didn't say that it was," Al rejoined.

"I know," Fitzhenri said. "But often when a person attempts suicide their loved ones feel some responsibility. They wonder if they could have stopped it."

"I did stop it," Al said. "She's alive, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is, thank God. What I meant was stop the individual from sinking into a mindset where suicide is a viable option. You know about Ruthie's problem?"

Al nodded. "She's manic-depressive."

"She has bipolar affective disorder," Fitzhenri corrected diplomatically. "It's a biochemical medical condition, just as much as diabetes or any other illness. Fortunately, it's just as controllable."

"Oh, yeah, I can tell. You're doing a great job of controlling it," Al said, rather more acerbically that he intended.

"Ruthie has previously been excellently managed with lithium alone. After this Doctor Tamblyn may look into trying her on Elavil or Aurorix."

"Elavil or Aurorix?"

"Antidepressants," said Fitzhenri. "If she responds either one should work to prevent future lows the same way the lithium prevents highs."

"So why isn't she taking those now?" Al demanded. There were drugs that could've stopped Ruthie from trying to kill herself and she wasn't taking them?

"She's always been more prone to mania—before now she's only had three episodes of severe depression, two of them in adolescence, before she was ever treated. She's never made any actual attempts on her life until last night. Doctor Tamblyn probably felt it wasn't necessary."

"Yeah? Well, I disagree."

"Understandably," she soothed. The condescension in her voice was driving Al up the wall. "Right no instead of dwelling on what could have been done we need to focus on bringing Ruthie out of her depression and helping both of you deal with what happened."

"Both of us?" Al echoed, instantly on his guard.

"Yes. I think you should begin to visit a mental health professional regularly," Fitzhenri said. "It will help you come to terms with last night's events, and we would be able to give you a better understanding of Ruthie's illness and her particular needs. Most of our patients living in the community encourage their spouses to seek support. I'm surprised Ruthie never suggested it."

"She did, several times," Al admitted sourly. He had thought she'd suspected the nature of his longer-than-expected tour of combat and was trying to interfere like the last one had.

"Well, now might be a good time to—"

"If seeing a goddamned headshrinker is the cost of a happy marriage then the price is too high!" Al snapped, his mind calling up unwanted memories of agonizing and humiliating therapy sessions not long enough ago.

"I don't think you mean that, Captain," Fitzhenri said, her calm voice cutting right through his anger and derailing it in favour of profound weariness.

"No, I guess not," he said, scrubbing his forehead with his fingers. "Look…" What were the words that had always made the Navy alienists go away? "I've got a lot to think about and I just need a little time to work through it before I talk any more about it."

She smiled maddeningly. "All right—for now. But it's very important that you consider what Ruthie—"

She stopped. Tamblyn had come out of his office. Seeing he was alone, Al got to his feet. "Where's Ruthie?"

"She's fallen asleep," Tamblyn said quietly. "Captain Calavicci, I'll be honest with you. Ruthie's been my patient for ten years, and the only time I have ever seen her this low was the night she first came in looking for help. I can't even imagine what she must have been going through last night. It's my opinion that all that's preventing her from trying again is a single unreliable variable."

"What?" Al asked.

Tamblyn shook his head. "I don't think that's important. What is important is that you understand that there is a very real danger that Ruthie will try again, and this time we might not be so lucky. She said you weren't even supposed to be home until late tonight?"

"Yeah, I was in Arizona on Navy business, but we'd had a fight and I wanted to get home…" Al drew a hand across his eyes. "Can you help her?"

"Yes, yes, I think I can," Tamblyn said. "Ruthie and I have talked about it, and we've agreed it's probably best if we give her an ECT treatment, just to jar her out of it. She's given her consent, but of course I'll need yours as well, as next-of-kin. Also, I'm starting her on Aurorix. That's an—"

"An antidepressant, yeah, we went over that," Al said. "What's ECT treatment?"

"Electro-convulsive therapy," Tamblyn said. "An electrode is applied to the temple—in Ruthie's case I think the right would be best—and a current is run through into—"

"_Electroshock_?" Al gasped. "You want to give her _electroshock_?"

"Essentially, yes," Tamblyn said. "She responded very well to it previously…"

"You're not giving my wife shock!" Al said, irrational rage overtaking him. It was a barbaric "therapy", a holdover from the dark days of leeches and razors. They used it as discipline, not therapy, to punish recalcitrant patients in long-term facilities. In institutions. What the hell was this monster up to, thinking of using it on Ruthie?

"Captain, it's a very effective procedure—"

"Nobody is going to fry Ruthie's brain! Not while I'm around to stop it!" Al cried.

"We're not frying anybody's brain," Tamblyn asserted levelly. "We simply administer a low-voltage shock that will kick-start her neurons and hopefully bring her right out of her depression."

"Like hell!"

"Captain, please be reasonable. I know electro-convulsive therapy has a bad reputation because of early imperfections to the treatment and a few isolated cases of abuse, but—"

"Damned right it does!" Al snapped. He had always wondered if they had done that to Trudy. She would panic when she was scared, sometimes she used to throw little tantrums. They might have… they might have… the thought made him sick. They might have done anything to her in that horrible place, and he hadn't been able to protect her, but he could and he would protect Ruthie.

"Captain, sit down," Tamblyn said. "Sit down. We can talk about this."

"No! You're not getting my consent to zap Ruthie in the head, so you might as well save your breath!"

"It is the quickest way to get her out of this depression," Tamblyn reasoned.

"You said you were going to give her that drug," Al said. "Let that get her out!"

"Captain Calavicci, it takes weeks, sometimes as long as two months before an antidepressant has its full effect. The benefits of ECT are almost immediate. Not very long-lived, but immediate, and by the time the results of the treatment begin to wear off the Aurorix should be working."

"If we have to wait a couple weeks we have to wait," Al said vehemently. "You're not going to shock Ruthie!"

"She wants the treatment," Tamblyn told him.

"The hell she does! You coerced that consent out of her: she isn't well!"

"No, she isn't well, and this is the best way to help her," Tamblyn explained.

"Over my dead body!"

Finally Tamblyn's mask of calm cracked. "Captain, I don't think you understand what is going on here. Your wife is deep in a depressive episode. Last night she tried to kill herself. If we can't get her out of this she may very well try again. Can you watch her day and night for three weeks to make sure that she doesn't while we wait for the antidepressant to work? And even if you could, is it fair to ask her to live like this for weeks, thinking she's worthless and life is hopeless and suicide is the only way out?" he demanded emphatically. "Is it?"

Al swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. "No," he whispered.

"All right," Tamblyn said, regaining his composure. "Then will you please believe me when I say that an ECT treatment is the best solution?"

Al shook his head intractably.

Tamblyn sighed. "It isn't like it used to be, Captain. Ruthie will be anesthetized and we will also administer a muscle relaxant to prevent any convulsions. All we do is give her a hundred and twenty-five volt shock that will almost certainly help her brain equilibrate again."

"What do you mean, almost?" Al demanded.

"Nothing is guaranteed," Tamblyn said; "but it's a very well-documented procedure, and Ruthie responded beautifully last time."

"When was last time?" Al asked.

"Ten years ago, the first time she came in," Tamblyn said. "It was the same thing: she wanted to kill herself, she was terrified that she would go through with it. After one treatment, only one, she was swinging up so quickly that we had to put her on lithium and Haldol."

"She's already on lithium."

"Which is exactly why I think this will just bring her back to normal," Tamblyn said. Al pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. Tamblyn regarded him earnestly. "It's the best way, Captain. Day surgery is standing by; the whole thing would be over in a couple of hours. All I need is your consent, and we can end this nightmare for her."

Al looked down at the form the psychiatrist was holding. He thought of Ruthie, struggling against his arms and begging for the pills. Did he really have any right to decide what was best for her?

Al ran his tongue along his lips. "All right," he said hoarsely, reaching for the pen.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

The next two hours seemed like years. Al paced the waiting room on the third floor, his mind playing through the hell of the last couple of days. What worried him most was that he wasn't more upset about the whole thing. His wife had tried to kill herself, damn it, and all he felt was a sort of detached pity, as if the whole thing had happened to a stranger while he stood there like some dispassionate observer. Ruthie had tried to swallow a whole bottle of sleeping pills, and he wasn't even really upset. He liked Ruthie, he did. He liked her looks and the sound of her voice, her mannerisms, her obsession with cleanliness, her cooking, her teasing, even her quick Jewish temper, but beyond that? Nothing. Sure, he had defended her against her ambulance-chasing brother-in-law and tried to look out for her best interests against the shrink, but he would have done that for anybody. He didn't care enough for her to feel genuine distress that she had tried to end her own life, and that filled him with self-disgust.

He was going to have to turn down Starbright Project, too. So much for that dream. His fault for dreaming, anyway. He had a duty to Ruthie, and without duty the world was a place of misery. Life had taught him that lesson almost before he could multiply and divide.

He paced more quickly, dimly resigning himself to spending the next twenty years behind a desk at one New England base or another, teaching kids how to fly, butting heads with the spirited ones and probably doing a lot of unnecessary damage. He should have stayed in the jungle, like some sort of Korean defector. It would have saved everybody a lot of unnecessary trouble.

Finally a nurse came to tell him that Ruthie was awake and settled in observation. He followed her into a room with five beds, all but two of them empty. In the one nearest the window Ruthie lay, propped up on pillows. She wore a white hospital gown, and her face was pale, save for a brilliant poppy-colored circle on her right temple. She looked at him as he approached the bed, her face emotionless.

"Hey, beautiful," Al said, out of habit and because he had no idea what to say. Ruthie squinted a little and her lips moved soundlessly.

"She's probably thirsty—aren't you, honey?" the nurse asked. She put a plastic cup with a straw into Al's hand. "Give her some water."

Al manoeuvred the straw carefully between Ruthie's lips. She drew on it and sighed, closing her eyes.

"How do you feel?" Al asked.

"Fuzzy," she murmured.

"Doctor Tamblyn wants to keep her here for a couple of days," the nurse said. "Just to make sure everything is fine and to get her started on her new medication."

"No more sleeping pills," Ruthie mumbled, sounding somewhat bleary and dazed.

"No," Al said. "No more sleeping pills."

"My head… it hurts…"

Al felt a wave of anger and remorse. "I never should have let that bastard shock you."

"Shock?" Ruthie said thickly. "Shock?"

"Electroshock. I'm sorry, Ruthie. We'll get you out of here."

"Shock… it helps. Feel better." Her tongue probed the air, looking for the straw. He guided it to her lips.

"Do you?" he asked. "Do you feel better?"

" 'M tired…" She closed her eyes. Al watched her anxiously. Then she looked at him and frowned. "You told him," she said. "You told him my secret. You promised…"

"I didn't tell anybody, Ruthie. Doctor Tamblyn already knows about your…" What had the lady shrink called it? "Your bipolar subjective disorder."

"Affective," the nurse corrected.

Ruthie was shaking her head. "You told him what happened," she said. "He knew. I didn't tell him, he already knew."

"I had to tell him, Ruthie. You needed help," Al said. She shook her head more vehemently.

"You promised…" she said.

"But I didn't," Al protested softly. Silence drifted up between them. Al set down the cup. "I just need to call Kelley and tell him I'm going to need some compassionate leave," he said. "Then I'll come right back and sit with you, okay?"

"No," Ruthie said. "No. You go. Come back to get me later. Go home. Don't tell anybody."

She didn't want him around. He could understand that. If he were in her condition he would rather die than let anybody see him. Rather die. She _would_ rather die than anything, that was the whole problem, and the worst part was that he wasn't upset.

"Ruthie, do you still feel… do you still want to… to kill yourself?" he asked.

She shook her head vaguely. "Time to sleep," she said. "I want a nap."

Al shot an accusatory glance at the nurse. So electroshock wasn't going to mess with her brain, was it?

"She's still groggy from the anesthetic," the woman said. "Why don't you go home and come back tomorrow?"

A fantastic idea. It would get him the hell out of this hospital, at least. Al took his wife's hand.

"Ruthie?" he said. "Ruthie, I'll be back tomorrow to visit you, okay?"

"No," she said. Her eyes were closed and at first he thought she was talking in her sleep. Then she looked at him. "No. Don't come to visit. When can I go home?"

"Probably Thursday, honey," the nurse said.

"Come and get me Thursday," Ruthie whispered. "Don't worry. And don't tell anybody."

"Thursday, then," Al promised. He would have preferred to check up on her tomorrow, but he knew from experience what a torment unwanted visitors were.

Ruthie nodded and tugged at the blankets. Al drew them up over her shoulders and took two of the pillows out from under her head. She settled in with a soft sigh, eyes drifting closed again. Al watched her for a moment and then moved back. Before he reached the door her voice stopped him.

"Wait," she said. He turned to see chocolate-colored eyes fixed on him. "Goodbye kiss?" Ruthie said.

He returned to her bedside and kissed her once, gently but dutifully. Then he withdrew.


	23. Chapter TwentyThree

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The bungalow was strangely empty without Ruthie: Al could feel that the moment he came through the door. His skin began to crawl. There was something horribly, horribly familiar about the feeling, and what was worse was that he knew exactly what it was. Without even closing the front door he went through to the living room and turned on the television, cranking the volume up to the max. He didn't know what was playing and he didn't care. Then he locked the front door and set about tidying up. He hung Ruthie's favorite blue dress up in the bedroom closet, put her shoes away, found a place for the earrings on her vanity. He stripped off the bedclothes and put the coverlet into the washing machine. In the kitchen there were the breakfast dishes to wash, and then he went back to the dining room to throw away the dead roses, which were full of the sickly-sweet smell of decay. After that the emptiness of the house was oppressive, even with the television blaring in the next room, so he mixed himself a quick screwdriver and went out into the back yard. He lay on his favorite lawn chair for a long, long time, staring up at the clouds. At last when the stars were starting to flicker into existence he came back inside, bathed, and went to bed in the spare room. __

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

He wasn't really conscious when they cut him down. Who would be conscious after God knew how many hours—how many days of ropes and whips and bamboo canes and strips of rubber? He didn't even remember what he had done to earn such brutal retribution. Hell, he wasn't even sure of his own name anymore. Calavi…no, Calve…wait, Cal… Cal…

The pain was so far beyond anything that could register in the rational mind that he hardly even noticed when they grabbed his arms and dragged him across dirt and gravel that stuck to his raw, bloodied flesh. His left shoulder was dislocated, and he thought maybe a couple of fingers, too. Had he tried to escape again? Maybe. They hadn't asked him any questions.

He was thirsty, so thirsty, so terribly thirsty, but the straw spun in the plastic hospital cup, and he couldn't get his tongue around it. The guards were chattering happily above him, but it seemed like their voices were coming from another world, somehow filtering through the blood and the agony to torment him with indistinct recollections of a world beyond thirst and anguish and hollow terror.

One of his captors grabbed his legs and he was being swung to and fro like a pendulum. Then they threw him, and he could feel the wind on his blood-drenched limbs as he arced through the air. It was going to hurt terribly, the landing, but he was too far gone even to brace himself.

It surprised him when he fell onto something soft, powdery and warm. A last, distant vestige of his mind asked him if he was dead, because this last sensation did not fit at all with the apparition of hell-on-earth that was usually so complete out here.

He drifted in a world wholly separate from his battered body for a long time, aware of the pain only as a barrier keeping him from coherent thought. Then suddenly fire and knives coursed up his leg and he opened his eyes, tearing his lids apart through the caked blood that matted his lashes. A rat, and enormous, sleek gray rat, was perched on his calf. It had bitten into the soft, bloody pulp that had once been the flesh behind the opposite knee. Fear gave him strength that he never would have otherwise possessed. He scrambled back, the motion startling the scavenger into flight. The ground gave way under his limbs, sliding from side to side. Suddenly he realized there were rats all around him, dozens of them, visible and invisible, chattering and feeding on whatever it was he was lying on. There were flies, too, thousands of flies, swarming all over the ground and crawling over his blood-caked body and hovering near his nostrils and his ears. He swatted madly at them with his right hand, delirious with anguish and confusion.

Trying to calm himself he set his hands on the ground, clasping at the soft surface below him. Something wet and spongy came off in his fingers, soft and porous but with a hard core. He looked down at it.

It was a human hand, mouldering, hunks of flesh falling away, maggots swarming over it. He threw it away, shaking with terror. Then he realized where he was. They had thrown him into the communal grave. He was lying on a heap of decaying bodies. He tried to stop the names from coming, but he couldn't. Nate Walker, Douglas Kennedy, Warren Nightingale, Pete Cooper, Jeffery Townsend, Fred Giocanni, Tommy Macalchuk… God, he was lying on top of their bodies. What was left of their bodies.

Nausea and terror battled with one another for the privilege of seizing all control of him. Terror won. Weak though he was from agony and loss of blood he scrambled to his feet and tried to climb the wall of the pit, but the jungle floor was ten feet above him and his left arm was useless. He fell back among the putrefying remains of his compatriots, and a decaying head rolled next to his face, the eyes gone from the sockets, the cheeks peeling away. It was still recognizable, though, with the matted dark hair and the distinctive jawline. Only it wasn't Fred this time.

It was Ruthie.

Al sat bolt upright in bed with the force of the scream. He didn't know how he managed to get to his feet: the same desperation that had seized him on that day had a hold on him now. Somehow he stumbled to the bathroom, and then he was bent double over the sink, vomiting uncontrollably.

The panic did not abate with the retching, and he climbed into the tub, his whole body quivering with terror and revulsion. He could feel the slime of decay on his skin, the pain from his wounds, the crawling of the insects and the worming of the maggots and the fire of the rat bite on the back of his leg. He turned the water on, a hot cascade in front of him from which he could draw as he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. His throat made sounds he couldn't control: hoarse shrieks and sobs and now and then a deep, keening wail of abject terror.

Finally his heart slowed and his breathing deepened and the noises stopped, but the trembling lingered. He realized he was burning his skin with the hot water, and so he turned it off in favor of cold and switched to the shower. The cool torrents calmed him and helped bring him back to the present, but he wasn't quite there yet. Not quite.

He never had found out whether to two kids who had thrown him into that pit had actually thought he was dead, or if it was one of Major Quon's creative punishments. Probably the latter, because they left him down there for a day and a night after he came back to consciousness (and who knew how long he had been lying there before sensation returned). He remembered screaming, begging them to haul him out. Even though the grave was some ways away from the heart of the camp they must have heard him. It probably had been Quon's idea. Certainly, after they finally did let down a rope and let him scramble up, doing more damage to his wounded body in the process, it had been a long time before he dared to stand up to his captors again, and even when he did they had a most effective threat with which to cow him.

Sleep was out of the question now, so Al stumbled to the liquor cabinet and poured himself half a tumblerful of whiskey. He drained it in one go, and felt the liquid courage settle the shaking in his limbs as the last panicked palpitations in his chest died away. Then he went into bedroom and dressed himself in the cleanest, most constrictive clothes he could find. On the curb outside of the bungalow he washed the Corvette by the light of the moon and the streetlamps, caressing the smooth enamelled metal as if it was the skin of a beautiful woman.

__

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

Tuesday he was back on duty, which was an enormous relief. If the kids found him more disinterested or sluggish than usual they didn't say anything. After he got home, he rang up Trenton Psychiatric and talked to Tamblyn. Ruthie was doing much better, he said. She was showing an interest in her situation and in returning to normal activities. Her discharge was still slated for Thursday morning, and yes, she was perfectly lucid. Hospital regulations didn't allow him to speak to her on the phone, but of course he was welcome to visit.

Al knew he wasn't welcome. Ruthie didn't want him there, and he had to respect that, so he lit up a cigar and tried to read—without much success. In hindsight he realized that Crime and Punishment was probably not the most uplifting choice of literature. That night, however, he contented himself with an excruciatingly hot bath and an early bedtime, taking a pre-emptive dose of spirits to stave off the dreams.

__

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM

The telephone rang. Al glanced up from the midweek evaluations he was writing, then reached across his desk.

"Calavicci," he said.

"Al! It's Mac. Listen, you have a minute to talk?" the voice on the other end said.

"Shoot." Al reached for his coffee. Despite his precautions he had had a restless night.

"You're in!"

"I'm what?"

"Starbright! You're in! It's yours! The committee is wowed by your credentials, you made a great impression on the staff, and even Doctor Eleese admits you're the man for the job. Congratulations! We're making arrangements for the reassignment: how does the end of June sound?"

Starbright. Damn it, he had forgotten about Starbright. The words stuck in his throat, it killed him to give voice to them, but they had to be said. "I'm sorry, Mac," he said; "I can't do it."

"What do you mean?" the admiral on the other end of the line said. "This job's perfect for you! You said you wanted it."

"I did," Al said; "but Ruthie doesn't. I'm sorry. I just can't do it."

"Can't you talk her round? Come on, Calavicci, nobody has a way with the girls like you do. I need you out here!"

Al closed his eyes over the pulsing headache that was beginning to throb through his frontal lobe. "Can't do it, Mac. God knows I'm sorry."

He hung up. After a minute the phone rang. He didn't answer it. It rang and it rang and it rang and it rang and it rang. When at last it fell silent he took it hastily off the hook, then buried his head in his hands and wondered wretchedly why the things he wanted most were always the most impossible to attain.


	24. Chapter TwentyFour

Note: "Scarborough Fair", English Traditional.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ruthie stepped off the city bus on the corner of Naomi's street. As she walked down towards the handsome townhouse she turned recent events over in her mind.

It all seemed so silly now. She had actually tried to kill herself—why? As Doctor Tamblyn had promised the black thoughts were gone, and with them the logic of suicide. Her head still ached a little where the electrode had been placed, but otherwise she felt better than she had in weeks. Doctor Tamblyn had been so impressed that he had discharged her early: Wednesday afternoon instead of Thursday morning. She didn't want to trouble Al before she had to, so she had decided to spend the night at Naomi's. Dropping in unannounced and without luggage, vehicle or husband was bound to raise some suspicions, but she felt so much better now that the idea of spending an evening with her nieces and nephews was actually appealing. She felt ready now to face life and sort out her problems, but she wasn't quite ready to face Al.

The one thing that hadn't dissolved in the electrical storm that had spun through her brain and exorcised her demons was the feeling that her marriage to Al was a terrible, terrible mistake. She was fully capable of living a full and normal life alone: years and years of independence had proved that. A full and normal life with a man like Al, however, was obviously a different matter. Some part of her mind couldn't cope with the lack of communication, the nocturnal disturbances, the decanter full of whiskey that got emptier and emptier every day. It wasn't Al's fault, it probably wasn't anybody's fault, but if they stayed together she was so afraid that they were both going to be miserable for the rest of their lives.

Ruthie didn't want to rush into things. She had to talk to Al first, to see if maybe they couldn't patch things up. Maybe her marriage would look different too, the way the rest of the world did. She doubted it, because it seemed like a bad idea, the only one in a sea of reasoned optimism. Nevertheless, she had to give it a try.

Nai didn't ask for explanations, and Ruthie didn't offer. She played with the kids, had supper with the family, and helped with the circus that passed for bedtime. When at last the five older children were asleep, Naomi settled in her rocking chair to nurse baby Sarah, and Michael mixed himself a gin and water. He offered Ruthie a drink too, but she declined.

"I was worried about you Monday," Michael said presently. "You weren't much like yourself."

"I wasn't," Ruthie agreed. "I'm feeling much better now."

"I can see that," Michael said. "How's your husband?"

There seemed to be more than the usual amount of subtext in that question. "He's fine," she said. "Very busy."

"I'm surprised he didn't stop in for coffee," Nai said mildly. Ruthie had told her (not quite untruthfully) that Al had driven her into town.

"He was in a hurry to get back," Ruthie told her. "Maybe we can talk him into it when he comes in to get me tomorrow."

"That's no good," Michael said. "I wanted to talk to him."

"About what?" Ruthie asked warily. Michael wasn't stupid, and he had seen so much: her dishevelled and sleepless state, Al's protective hostility, the lithium tablets. He had probably discovered her secret.

Michael shrugged noncommittally. "Just this and that," he said. Then he reached out and brushed the circular electrode burn on her temple. Involuntarily she gasped and pulled away from the sting of contact. "How did this happen, Ruthie?"

His voice was so gentle and full of genuine concern that for a second Ruthie wanted to pour out the whole story, from the vacillating hell of high school to the first stay in the hospital to the foolish deviation from her therapy that had landed her and Al both in this trouble in the first place.

Then she remembered that Michael was a lawyer. What if Al had decided to get her declared _non compos mentis_? What if he was trying to get her committed, and had enlisted Michael's help in trapping her? He certainly hadn't wasted any time getting her to the hospital. Maybe… maybe…

"Ruthie?" Michael asked, pulling her back to the conversation at hand. "How did it happen?"

"I… I just woke up and there it was," she equivocated. "I'm not sure when exactly it happened."

"Did Al do it?" Naomi asked softly.

Ruthie turned on her. "No!" she said sharply. "No! He didn't!"

"What about those bruises on your wrist?" Michael pressed.

Ruthie looked down at the fading marks on her arm where Al had grabbed her in his desperate struggle to save her from herself. "That was an accident," she whispered. "He didn't mean to." She looked up, desperate to dissuade them from the irrational and slanderous theory they were positing. "Al doesn't hit me!"

"Of course not," Michael said, his voice unreadable. "But anyone can see you two aren't happy."

"They do? You can?" The question disarmed her utterly.

Michael nodded. "This marriage isn't quite what either of you expected, is it?" he said.

Ruthie thought about Al's nightmares, and the whiskey, and the woman named Beth. Then she remembered how she hadn't even told him she was a manic-depressive until their honeymoon. "No," she said; "it's not."

Her brother-in-law's mouth formed a sad, understanding smile. "I bet you sometimes feel like you rushed into things, maybe even that you married a stranger."

Ruthie felt her cheeks burn. How did Michael know that? "More than just sometimes," she confessed.

"That's nothing to be ashamed of, hon," Naomi said gently. "We all make mistakes, and sometimes it's impossible to tell what a person is really like until after you get married. It doesn't matter how long you're engaged: some people are just like that. The important thing is that you fix the mistake before it gets worse."

"Worse?" Ruthie echoed.

"Worse, like you get pregnant," Michael said, his words clipped and strangely abrupt. "Do you want to drag a baby into that kind of home situation?"

"_Mike_!" Naomi gasped, scandalized.

"It's something Ruth needs to think about," Michael said firmly. "Well, Ruth?"

She stared at him in horror. He couldn't really expect her to answer a question like that, could he?

"Don't tell me," Michael said, to her infinite relief. "Just promise you'll think about it."

"I—I'll think about it," Ruthie stammered.

Michael's expression softened. "Good," he said, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. Michael was a real _mensch_. "You shouldn't have to pay for any mistake forever, Ruthie, not even marriage."

"I… I don't know for sure it was a mistake," Ruthie said. Things weren't working out the way they were supposed to, but she still loved Al… sort of. She was beginning to wonder if that wasn't just a symptom of her depression, too.

"I have to tell you, though," Michael added; "that divorce is much worse when there's a child involved. It's better to make the break now."

Ruthie turned to Naomi, hoping to hear that everything would work out. She wanted to make it work, but she was beginning to think Michael was right after all. The thought of she and Al having a baby terrified her. What kind of a mother would she be, relying on medication just to get through another day without spiralling out of control? What if she sank into depression again? What if she actually did kill herself? And Al? He was patient with his nieces and nephews, he was good with kids, but he had never spent more than a day with them. Would he be brusque and impatient with a son, the way he was with his trainees? Would he yell at a daughter the way he sometimes yelled when he and Ruthie fought? And what kind of normal life could a child have, anyway, with a father employed on a top-secret government project in Arizona? Still, if Naomi thought there was a chance of a happy marriage, Ruthie could stick it out. She could make it work, somehow.

Instead, Naomi looked at her sadly. "I know it won't be easy, Ruthie," she said. "Catholics don't like divorce at all, but once Al sees he doesn't have a choice…"

Somehow Ruthie excused herself from the room. Upstairs, she settled in Ester's narrow bed, vacated happily for Auntie. She lay awake for a long, long time, praying frantically for guidance.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

The following morning she sat in Naomi's rocker, Sarah in her arms. The child was a warm, soothing weight against her breasts, and every rise and fall of the tiny chest filled her with joy in the tiny pleasures of life—joy that was sweeter from long absence.

Joshua's laugh came from the kitchen, where Nai was baking cookies. Ruthie smiled a little. It felt so good to hear a happy sound and not resent it. Doctor Tamblyn had promised that the new medication would help keep her from slipping back into depression once the effects of the ECT wore off. Everything was going to be all right.

Sarah stirred, making a small, fretful sound. Ruthie cuddled her closer and started to sing. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt like singing. "_Are you goin' to Scarborough fair; parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme? Remember me to one who lives there. He once was a true love of mine._"

The front doorbell rang, and Ruthie heard Nai coming down the hall from the kitchen. She smiled down at Sarah, still singing. "_Tell him to find me an acre of land; parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme_…"

Sarah cooed softly. Ruthie kept singing. "…_between the salt-water and the sea-sand. Then he'll be a true love of mine._"

"Yes, come on in," Nai was saying. "Right through there."

"_Ask him to plow it with a lamb's horn; parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme_," Ruthie sang. The buzzer in the kitchen went off, and Nai rushed off to rescue her baking from the inferno. "_And sow it all over with one peppercorn. Then he'll be a true love of mine._"

Sarah's eyes were closed, and she was making tiny sucking motions with her rosebud mouth. She was beautiful, peaceful, full of potential. Just like life. Dear little baby.

"_If you say you can't, I shall reply; parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme; oh, let me know that at least you shall try, or you cannot be a true love of mine…_"

Warm lips pressed against the flesh behind her ear. "I've never heard you sing before," Al said quietly. "I was right: you do have a beautiful voice."

Ruthie turned. When had he come in? How long had he been standing there? "Good morning!" she whispered, startled and not sure what else to say.

"I stopped by the hospital," Al said, coming around to sit on the edge of the sofa; "and they told me you were discharged yesterday afternoon. Why didn't you call?"

"I was going to," Ruthie said; "but I decided I wanted to spend some time with Naomi and the kids."

"So does Naomi know?" Al asked.

Ruthie frowned. It was spiteful of him to bring that up. The foolishness of the weekend was much better forgotten. She couldn't imagine what had gotten into her. "No, of course not. I took the bus from the hospital."

"I see." Al looked at the baby. "That's Sarah, right?"

"Right," Ruthie said, smiling fondly at the tiny human in her arms.

"Do you want kids?" Al asked unexpectedly, studying her face.

"No," Ruthie told him. She didn't want kids, she didn't want marriage. She wanted to go back to Jersey City and get her job back and return to the life she had had before she had been stupid enough to stop taking her lithium and got her and a good man into this mess. Of course, she couldn't tell Al that. Not here. If she did decide to go through with a divorce it would be humiliating enough for both of them without her adding an audience to the initial scene.

"Neither do I," he said. "Navy's no life for a kid."

There was a silence.

"It's not much of a life for a civilian, period," Al said. "I want you to know I'm not taking that project. We can stay right here in Jersey."

"You turned down the top secret project?" Ruthie asked, suddenly startled.

"Yeah."

But he had really wanted it. She remembered the boyish enthusiasm that had seized him when he talked about it. She had resented it at the time, but that was because her brain had been forcing her to feel miserable and it was impossible not to begrudge others their happiness.

"But… I thought you really wanted it!"

Al shrugged. "I'm not going to drag you off to the middle of the desert, a thousand miles away from your family," he said. "I like teaching these kids to fly just fine."

He was lying, she could see it in his eyes. Her heart sank. He was turning down something he wanted, probably more than he had wanted anything in a long time, because he was afraid that the threat of a transfer was what had pushed her over the edge. This marriage wasn't just keeping her from the life she wanted, it was keeping Al from the life that _he _wanted, too. Neither of them could be happy if they stayed together. Michael was right: they had rushed in, and now they needed to get out. He had fallen in love with the manic Ruthie, and the manic Ruthie was the one who had fallen in love with him: once the lithium had levelled her back out again they were nothing but two strangers with nothing in common, aliens with wildly divergent life goals and values. Now he was trying to do what he believed was right, but if there was one thing Ruthie knew it was that you couldn't sacrifice your whole life trying to make other people happy.

They left with hardly another word to each other, Ruthie kissing Nai and promising to call soon, Al producing a candy bar for Josh. As Al was battening down the top of the Corvette Naomi pulled Ruthie back towards the front porch.

"You don't need to go with him," she whispered. "We'll protect you, Ruthie, I promise."

Ruthie didn't understand the last remark, so she focused on the first. "Of course I need to go with him, Nai. He's still my husband."

Naomi watched her sadly as she ran down the walk to slide through the door Al held open for her.

They rode home in virtual silence, the wind roaring by their ears. For once Ruthie was grateful for Al's preference to drive with the top down. It gave her time to consider her options carefully.


	25. Chapter TwentyFive

Note: For this and subsequent chapters, "_Volare_" © Dominic Modugno, 1958, I think.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Al dropped his wife at the bungalow, stopping in himself only long enough to get into his duty uniform. Part of him wanted to stay with Ruthie and try to patch things up… or maybe some small part of his mind was scared that she would try again. He had no faith in electroshock, none at tall. Practicality would not permit him to fulfill even this little desire, as reasonable as it was. He had messed up the training schedule so badly these last couple weeks that if he didn't get it back on track those kids wouldn't be licensed until Christmas. Hanukkah. Until Hanukkah.

The day afforded its fair share of opportunities for thought, and by the end of the watch Al had decided it would be best to let Ruthie decide what they talked about. She jaws the one in the emotionally precarious position, and anyhow he felt so strangely detached from the entire situation that he didn't care anymore what they talked about. Just so long as it wasn't Beth.

When he got home Ruthie was just getting supper onto the table. She had prepared a veritable feast featuring one of his new favorites and a dish she prepared better than anyone, including her mother: gefilte fish. She did it the traditional way, stuffing a whole carp with the paste of fish, onions and carrots. She had also prepared more sided dishes than they reasonably needed. It was the kind of meal neither of them had eaten in a fortnight.

They ate in relative amicability, Ruthie questioning Al about his day, Al complimenting Ruthie's absolutely sublime cooking. Nothing of any consequence was discussed. They washed the dishes together and then they played a couple of rounds of gin rummy at the dining room table. Al went off to shower after losing twice in a row, and came out fifteen minutes later to find Ruthie in front of the television, occupied with the usual NBC prime time drivel while she folded laundry. Experience had taught him to give her plenty of elbow room when she was doing this: her folding standards were higher than those of the toughest quartermaster. So he sat down in his armchair with a cigar to keep her company. Then he put his clothes away, and Ruthie did the same with hers, and they got into bed. No profound personal revelations, no attempts at intimacy, just the warm presence of two bodies on one mattress as their breathing deepened and sleep gently overtook them both. It was a perfectly ordinary end to a perfectly normal evening of complacent domesticity.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

Ruthie was walking down a long corridor, a sterile white hallway that smelled of disinfectant and floor wax. She could hear voices whispering behind the doors to either side. They were talking about her, discussing her like she wasn't even there, but she couldn't hear _what_ they were saying. She tried to open a door, but the handle wouldn't turn. She knocked on the next one. The voices inside stopped their indistinct muttering. She rattled the door. No answer.

At the end of the hall was one more door. Behind it she could hear a voice mumbling low and very quickly, like a child reciting ill-memorized multiplication facts in the desperate hope that he would remember them when the teacher asked the question. As Ruthie drew near the door she realized that the voice _was_ reciting numbers.

"B-933-852," it spewed rapidly, almost frantically. "15-06-34."

She reached out to touch the doorknobs. It was cold and wet. As she touched it the door flew away from her.

"Leave me alone!" a hoarse voice screamed, angry and desperate and at the same time terrified. "Leave me alone! Haven't you done enough already? Don't you need to sleep?"

Ruthie realized she was awake, lying in bed in the dark. What she had taken ahold of was not a doorknob, but Al's shoulder. He was now curled into a tight ball of agony, his arms thrown over his head. He was whimpering now. "Sleep… sleep… oh, God, let me sleep…"

"A-Al?" Ruthie ventured, pushing herself into a semi-prone position. "Al?"

She reached out to touch his sweat-drenched back, hoping to startle him out of the nightmare. As her fingers brushed his skin he scrambled away with a hollow wail. He fell off the edge of the bed and landed hard on the carpet. For a moment there was silence, then soft sounds of wretched fear came from the floor. Ruthie reached over and turned on the bedside lamp, then crawled to the edge of the bed.

Al had his knees tucked tightly under his body, his head pressed to the floor and his hands shielding the back of his skull desperately. Tremors wracked his back and his limbs.

"Al?" she whispered. Then louder, still hoping to wake him; "Al?"

He flinched and the sounds stopped. Hoping he was awake Ruthie slipped out of bed and put one hand on each of his shoulders. He stiffened but did not move.

"Al, wake up," Ruthie said. "It's just a dream."

Her braid slithered over her shoulder and landed on his back. Without changing his position, Al began to scream at her, ejecting words of a language she did not understand or recognize. Although the sounds were foreign, the intention was obvious from his tone. Ruthie drew back, frightened by the fury and vitriol in the still obviously terrified voice. She retreated to the door and switched on the overhead light. On the floor, Al shuddered, then drew in a ragged and painful breath.

"Al?" Ruthie said hesitantly. "Al, are you awake?"

He uncurled slowly and stiffly, as if the nightmare had left him in physical discomfort. Planting his hands firmly on the carpet he pushed himself up into a kneeling position, panting laboriously. Ruthie wanted to run to him and ask if he was okay, to try to comfort him the way he had comforted her on Sunday night, but her heart was pounding like a timpani in her chest and she could not move.

"Al?" she said, for what felt like the ten thousandth time.

He was scrubbing at his face with his hands, muttering inaudibly to himself. Ruthie watched as his right thumb stroked first one cheek, then the other, and her throat constricted. Was he wiping away tears?

"Al, Al, are you okay?"

Grabbing the edge of the mattress for support, Al got up onto trembling legs. He stood for a moment with his back to Ruthie, one arm folded tightly across his abdomen, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed from his throat. When at last that motion moved down into his chest and finally to his abdomen where it belonged, he turned. His face was blank and schooled, but dreadfully white. He approached the door almost as if he could not see Ruthie.

"Al?" she said again as he drew near. "Al, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said, his voice husky and tight with control. "Just a dream."

"A nightmare," Ruthie said gently. She put a hand on his arm. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"Okay," she whispered. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, cupping her right hand over the sweat-soaked curls on the back of his head and rubbing her left up and down his clammy spine, her fingers rippling over his inexplicable scars. For a minute he leaned into the embrace, his tightly closed mouth pressed against the crook of her neck and his eyes hidden in her hair. Then he pulled away, using his hands to push her arms down to her sides.

"I'm fine," he repeated firmly.

"You didn't look fine a minute ago," Ruthie said, forgetting that she had just agreed he didn't have to talk about it. "What on earth were you dreaming about?"

"Nothing," Al said shortly. "Nothing, it was just a dream."

Ruthie shivered and hugged herself.

"It sounded so real," she said softly.

There was an almost desperate edge to Al's voice with his next words.

"It wasn't real," he said hastily. "It wasn't real."

"N-no," Ruthie stammered, frightened by the terror that flashed through his dark eyes. "No, it wasn't real. It was just a dream." She put out her arms, hoping he would let her take hold of him again. She needed to soothe his fright as much as he needed it to be soothed. He had scared her, and she needed to do something, to be useful to him. If they couldn't even be useful to each other there was no reason for them to stay together. She realized abruptly that if he wasn't going to let her help him cope with whatever it was that was tormenting him, then the last excuse to hold out and hope for better times was gone.

Al backed away. "I'm fine," he said again, his voice hardening. "I'm fine. I'm sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep."

He left the bedroom and the hall light came on. Ruthie followed after him, catching his arm. "Al, wait!" she said.

He spun around, defiant fire in his eyes, and for a moment she thought he was going to strike her. Instead, he wrenched his arm from her grasp.

"Please don't touch me," he said, his voice low and trembling. He rubbed his wrist violently, as if her grip had burned him. "Go back to bed."

"You're going to get a drink," Ruthie challenged. "Aren't you?"

"No," Al said, shaking his head firmly. Then his voice faltered again. "I'm going to take a shower."

"You showered before bed," she whispered.

"And I'm sweating like a pig," he countered in the voice of one accustomed to giving orders. "I'm going to take a shower."

He vanished into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. Ruthie pressed her hands against it. She could hear the running water, but nothing else. At last she turned and obeyed. It was a long time before she fell asleep, but he didn't come back.

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

Al was already awake when Ruthie got up the next morning, sitting at the kitchen table alternately nursing a coffee and a cigar as he pored over the weekly base newsletter. Ruthie poured herself a coffee and sat down across from him.

"Al," she said, reciting the speech she had perfected in the long wait for slumber; "I realize I haven't quite been the wife you expected."

"Expectations lead to disappointments," Al said pleasantly, not looking up from his paper. "That's why I try not to have any."

Ruthie had not expected any interruption at this juncture, so she took a sip of coffee to give her mind the time it needed to equilibrate. "I should have told you about my… my disorder before it was too late."

"Too late?" Al asked, his tone still conversational.

"Before we got married," Ruthie clarified.

"Do you think it would have made any difference?"

Ruthie looked up at him, startled. He was still focused on the paper. "I…I don't know," she admitted.

"I've tried to understand what you're going through," Al said. "I'm sorry for the way I've been blundering through this, but it's a new situation for me. I'm learning as I go, here. I'll get better with time.

"What? No—no, you've been doing really well," Ruthie said. "I can tell you want to help me, and you have. If you hadn't…" She couldn't say it. All she could do was hope he understood. After another mouthful of coffee she segued back to her prepared speech. "You've helped me, and I want to help you, too."

"I don't need any help," Al said, puffing contentedly on his cigar. "Looks like we might be in for some rain today."

"Al, you talk in your sleep," Ruthie said, not letting him phase her this time. "Not just to this woman named Beth…last night you were telling someone to leave you alone. Then you begged them to let you sleep. Then you started speaking in tongues."

He finally looked up, dark eyes sparkling with amusement. "Speaking in tongues?" he asked.

"Yes," Ruthie said. "I've never heard anything like it."

He laughed. "You sure I wasn't speaking Italian?" he asked. "_Fa la signora ebrea bella amano il suo uomo italiano precipitare…_"

Ruthie shook her head. "I know what Italian sounds like. Sometimes you do talk Italian, or sing in it—"

"_Sing_?"

"Yeah," Ruthie said, smiling against her will. His grin was infections. " '_Volare'_, mostly."

"Ah!" Al sighed happily. He closed his eyes and started to sing. "_E volavo, volavo felice piu in alto del sole ed ancora piu su_…"

Ruthie brought him back with her firmest matriarchal voice. "But last night you weren't speaking Italian. It was something else."

"Spanish?" Al tried.

"No. It was all vowels… "_oh_" and "_ai_", especially. You were angry—it sounded like you were swearing. Al, please tell me what it is you dream about."

"Ruthie, after three months of marriage I would have thought you'd figure out that I don't want to talk about my dreams," Al said soberly, all traces of his smile gone. "Just leave it alone. Trust me, sugar, you don't want to know."

"Maybe I don't," Ruthie allowed. "Maybe it's so terrible that I really would be happier not knowing. But that isn't going to keep our marriage together, Al. If we're going to stick it out I need to know what happened. I can't live with this if I don't understand why it has to be this way."

"Ruthie…" Al drew his fingers across his forehead and sucked on the cigar. "Ruthie, you don't know what you're asking."

"I'm asking for the truth, Al," she said. "That's all. Just the truth."

"The truth about what?" Al asked coolly. She had the spooky feeling that he was testing her.

She ticked off the points on her fingers. "Who is Beth? Why do you talk to her in your sleep? And what happened to you that you dream about and that makes you want to shower in the middle of the night?"

Al regarded her inscrutably for a minute, then folded the newsletter carefully. "I see we're back to where we started two weeks ago," he said. "I'll be back home at seventeen hundred—that's five o'clock your time."

He started for the front door. Furious at his adamant refusal to even try to meet her halfway, Ruthie ran after him. "Albert Calavicci, this is your last chance to be honest with me!" she exclaimed.

He paused at the door. "My last chance, huh?"

Ruthie nodded vehemently.

"Well, all right. Here's a little truth for you." He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "You're beautiful, and when I get home we're going to have a nice, quiet evening in and forget this conversation ever happened."

Then he was gone. A second later the Corvette peeled away towards the heart of the base. Ruthie stood in the doorway, quivering with anger. Well, she had tried. She really had tried. Since the first dream, thirteen weeks ago—had it really only been _thirteen weeks_?—she had tried everything from ignoring them to sedating herself. Enough was enough. If he wasn't going to be honest—if he couldn't trust her even after all the trust she had given him—then the decision she had reached yesterday at Nai's was the right one after all. She locked the front door and went to the phone. She dialed her mother.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

Al didn't understand why women always wanted to turn life into a damned opera. Melodramatic proclamations that always came to nothing… last chance? Hah. He didn't believe that. She'd be ready to make up when he got home, but what the hell was he going to do when she decided she wanted to grill him about his dreams again? Why couldn't she just leave well enough alone? Women never could. They always had to know everything. They didn't know how to mind their own damned business.

He rounded the corner onto their street. The shadows were lengthening on the lawn, and the Honda was out on the garage pad, the trunk full of boxes and luggage. Al stared at it for a minute, then hurried into the house, wondering what the hell was going on.

He found Ruthie in the bedroom, packing away the last of her clothes.

"Ruthie?" he said. "What's this?"

She turned to look at him, her face grave. "I can't do this, Al," she said. "It's wrong. The whole thing was a mistake. I'm sorry."

He stared at her. She was leaving? Damn it, she was leaving.

"No!" he said, not sure where the words were coming from. "No, we can work it out. Everything will be fine, you'll see. Just give it a couple of weeks."

She shook her head and zippered the suitcase. "I'm not the same person you fell in love with," she said. "I can't ever be that person. When I am, I'm sick and I need help. When I'm not I'm either a nagging control freak or a suicidal lump of nothing. It's not fair to ask you to deal with that."

"I don't care," Al said. "I can deal with it. I'll even go see a shrink if you want me to. We can get through this."

"No," Ruthie said. She was emptying the vanity drawers into her makeup case. "I want to go back to Jersey City. I liked having my own apartment, my own friends, my own life. I liked sleeping in a bed all by myself. That's what I want, and you want your career. This way, we can both be happy."

The electroshock _had_ done something to her mind! Al moved to block her exit.

"Ruthie, don't. We can fix it. We don't need to do this."

She looked into his eyes and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Al, no," she said. "Now please, just let me leave."

"Where are you going?"

"Mama's," she said. "You'll be hearing from Michael. I just want a clean break, like this whole thing never happened. We've only been married for three months: we should be able to move on just fine."

His throat constricted. Another relationship collapsing like a tower of cards right before his eyes, and he didn't even really care. It was once again like the whole thing was happening to a stranger. He nodded and took the suitcase from her hand. "A clean break," he said flatly.

She followed him out to the car, and he put the case into the back, closing the trunk. Ruthie put her makeup case on the passenger seat and regarded him somberly.

"It's better this way," she said softly.

He turned and went back into the house, afraid of how he might react if he had to watch her drive off, just the way he always imagined Beth must have driven off…

The image sprung up before his eyes, but he didn't even care. What did it matter? If he was going to get cut up about a loss, it might as well be a real one.

The telephone rang before he could close the door. He picked up the receiver. "Calavicci," he said.

"Al!" It was Admiral Kelley. "I just wanted to let you know MacArthur called me. He's pretty cut up about you turning down Starbright Project: wanted to know if I could talk you 'round for him. I told him you were a man of your word, and if you said no, you meant it. I just thought you should be aware that the conversation was had, and—"

No great loss without some small gain. He had never believed that expression until now. "Kelley—sir, listen. Can you do something for me? You call Mac back and tell him… tell him I've changed my mind, the end of June will be perfect, I can hardly wait and I'm sorry for stringing him out like that."

"You want it after all?" Kelley clarified.

"Yes." God, did he want it! Now more than ever.

"But I thought that your wife—"

The little red Honda pulled out of the driveway and vanished down the street, visible for an instant in the rectangle of the screen door.

"I've got a feeling I'm going to be a single man again real soon," Al said, grimly dispassionate.

He didn't listen to Kelley's garbled condolences and promises. He cradled the receiver and went through to the kitchen. He needed a drink, and he needed a cigar.


	26. Chapter TwentySix

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"Happy forty-sixth, Calavicci," Al muttered, dragging his Corvette to a halt in the parking lot of the courthouse. He couldn't believe how quickly his soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law had got all of his legal ducks in a row. Sixteen days from break-up to hearing. Talk about your quickie divorce.

He had only seen Ruthie once since her departure, and that had been during the preliminary arraignment, with both legal counsels and the presiding judge present. She seemed well—quieter than usual and reluctant to meet his gaze, but there were no shadows under her eyes anymore. He wondered if the new medication was working. He hoped so.

There was no point in bearing Ruthie any ill will. The marriage had been a bad idea from the start. They were hopelessly mismatched, from their divergent political views to their different definitions of a healthy relationship. Ruthie clearly had trouble with the don't-ask-don't-tell model, and Al couldn't blame her. Keeping a secret like hers from her whole family couldn't be easy, and she was just trying to make sure he had the safe place she had always wanted herself. The trouble was that he didn't want a safe place to talk: he wanted a safe place where no one would ask him questions. Despite her good intentions, she didn't understand that.

Al had wasted no time moving to quarters at the B.O.Q. He wasn't going to stay alone in that empty bungalow. Once or twice in the last couple weeks he had awakened with nightmares, but it wasn't likely that anyone in the sparsely populated senior officers' wing had heard him. Anyhow, he could shower or smoke or calm himself with a little amber mercy whenever he wanted, and he would be lying if he said he wasn't damned glad.

It would make a nice birthday present: freedom. Of course, it was going to be expensive, but there had been a time when he would have sold his soul to Satan for a couple seconds of liberty, so monetary sacrifices seemed small. He was shipping out to Arizona in nine days, anyway, and if Ruthie hadn't decided so quickly on divorce he would never have been able to take the assignment.

There was comfort in that, too. The second it became obvious that Ruthie wasn't willing to move he had known that sooner or later they were going to split. If he had force her to go, she would have left him regardless. If he had turned it down for her, as in fact he had, then eventually he would have resented it. Maybe not right away, maybe not for years, but some day when he could no longer have written it off as a freely made decision he would have blamed her. Probably he would never have told her so, but something like that could poison a marriage awfully quickly. He was an expert at poisoned marriages. A clean break, just like Ruthie had said, was the best way to go. Thank God there hadn't been any little accidents. Divorce was always hardest on the kids.

Al smoothed his hair and trotted up the steps of the courthouse, feeling like a corporate drone in his sober brown suit. Don't overdo it, his do-nothing attorney had said. Sedate, dignified… _boring_.

The fool himself was waiting inside, looking anxious as a rabbit. Al greeted him curtly and followed him into a chamber just off the courtroom provided for last-minute coaching of clients by their counsel—or in this case of counsel by his client.

"Captain Calavicci—" the man began.

Al knew what he was about to say: they had had this argument six times already.

"_No_. You are not going to use Ruthie's medical condition against her." Al was ninety-nine percent sure that he hadn't been the source of this leak. The man was a determined one, you had to give him that. Dedicated, but still stupid as a log.

"Captain, it's a legitimate defense—"

"It's an unacceptable defense," Al said. "I don't want this to get ugly."

"You'll forgive me for my candor, Captain, but this is already ugly," the lawyer said. He reminded Al of his first probation officer. Dumb and argumentative. "Mrs. Calavicci is charging you with emotional abuse."

Al frowned. "Emotional abuse? That doesn't sound much like Ruthie."

"I don't know anything about your wife, but I assure you, her attorney called me yesterday morning to add it to the charge sheet."

"Ah!" Al said with the confidence that came with absolute certainty. "My nozzle of a brother-in-law's behind it. Probably because Ruthie wouldn't let him try for physical abuse."

That had been the most interesting part of the preliminary. Michael had made a heinous insinuation about how Al was a wife-beating drunk, and Ruthie had practically eaten him alive with her vehement denials. That she was taking an honest instead of a spiteful approach to the thing made this a new experience for Al. The last divorce had got very messy before the rather ignominious end.

"Can they make it stick?" the lawyer asked.

Al shrugged. "Depends what he says I did."

"He… uh…" The man dug into his briefcase and pulled out a piece of paper. "They're claiming you sing 'Vole-air' in your sleep?"

"_Volare_," Al corrected.

"Well, do you?"

"I dunno. I might. It's a good song." Al snapped his fingers and began to sing. "_Volare, oh-oh. Contare, oh-oh-oh-oh. Nel blu depinto de blu, felice de stare lassu. E volavo, volavo—_"

"Captain, please! Do you have any idea what kind of repercussions a charge like this could have?" Al mentally added _jumpy alarmist_ to his list of descriptives pertaining to this man. "If you'll just let me mention you're wife's condition, the judge will have to give you the benefit of the doubt. She can't be a reliable gauge of emotional abuse if she's emotionally unstable."

"She's not emotionally unstable, she's got bipolar affective disorder," Al snapped with some of the viciousness that he had used in response to those snot-nosed idiots who used to call Trudy "monkey-face". "If she wants to bring it up, that's her choice, but they aren't going to hear it from me, and they're definitely not going to hear it from you."

"Captain, do you want to lose everything?"

Al grinned to cover the twist of pain that shivered through his stomach. "Hey, I had to earn a promotion to pay for the last divorce," he quipped. "It's not the end of the world!"

MWMWMWMWMWMWMWM 

Ruthie stole a sidelong glance at the defendant's table, where Al was doodling absently on the corner of one of his attorney's papers. Michael was talking, but if Al couldn't be bothered to listen, why should she? Let the lawyers fight it out. That was what they were there for.

Behind her she could hear Sarah fussing quietly. Ruthie had reasoned, argued and begged, but Nai had refused to back down. She had insisted on coming to lend moral support. Still, the only reason Ruthie hadn't appealed to the judge to have her sister banned from the courtroom was that Mama had agreed to stay at home with Joshua instead of coming out herself, as long as Naomi was present.

It had been hard to explain her decision to her parents. Neither of them approved of divorce, especially not Papa. A marriage was forever. Naomi had had some kind of talk with him, however, that had seemed to soften him to the prospect. Ruthie had no idea what had been said, but she was very grateful to her sister for making the whole thing easier.

Mama had at first been very understanding—until, oddly enough, Ruthie had told her about Al's nightmares. Not the ones about Beth, because that reality was too humiliating to relate, but the ones with the fear and the defiant, agonized screaming. Then Mama had launched into a lecture Ruthie had never heard before, all about the fragility of the mind and the need for understanding when a man's imagination held him prisoner—as if Ruthie didn't know the torments the human brain could inflict on itself. When she was done with that, Mama had gone on to tell stories about her own early days of marriage. These, too, were new to Ruthie. Papa had once been wont to awake in the middle of the night to hide in a closet or behind the sofa or under Naomi's crib. Ruthie didn't understand why her mother suddenly felt compelled to share these tales she had kept to herself for decades. Papa's case and Al's were not even remotely comparable. Papa's nightmares had been the result of his brutal treatment by the Germans and the horrors he had witnessed in the Nazi concentration camps. Whatever trauma lay at the root of Al's dreams couldn't possibly be anything like that. Al was American, and anyway he had only been a little boy during the war. Things like that didn't happen anymore.

"Ruthie?" Michael said for what from his tone was not the first time. Ruthie looked questioningly at him. "Would you please come up and take the stand?" he asked with an air of infinite patience.

Ruthie complied, smoothing her skirt nervously. For some reason Michael had suggested that she wear her blue dress, the one with the ribbons. She felt oddly frivolous and childish next to Al in his conservative brown suit.

"Ruthie, is it true that your doctor prescribed you sleeping pills because Captain Calavicci was keeping you awake at night?" Michael asked.

"That's a leading question," Al's attorney protested.

"Allow me to rephrase it," Michael said graciously. "Ruth, when did you start taking sleeping pills?"

"A little over a month ago," Ruthie answered.

"Why did you decide you needed them?"

"I didn't," Ruthie said. "I mean, I didn't decide that I needed them; my psy—my analyst did."

"Why?"

"He said it would be better if… if I wasn't always waking up to hear the sounds Al was making at night," Ruthie said.

Al was finally paying attention to the proceedings. Ruthie felt a pang of guilt. He hadn't known why she was taking the Phenobarbital. Until she had tried to kill herself he hadn't even been aware they were in the house.

"The sounds Al was making at night," Michael mused. "Tell me, Ruthie, exactly what kind of sounds does Captain Calavicci make at night?"

Ruthie glanced at Al, who was watching her anxiously. Clearly he _did_ remember the dreams about which he pretended so much ignorance. Equally obvious was his acute desire not to have their details publicized.

"He sings," she said. "Sometimes he sings in his sleep."

"Indeed? What does he sing?"

" '_Volare'_, he sings '_Volare_' a lot," Ruthie said. Al was beginning to relax a little. She thought she could even see a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. Ruthie warmed into the yarn. "I think once he sang _'Arreviderci Roma_'."

"I see," Michael said. "So he would wake you up in the middle of the night crooning like a lounge lizard." He paused. "Does Captain Calavicci sing well?"

"Well?" Ruthie asked. Where on earth was Michael going with this? She just wanted a nice, clean divorce so that both of them could go on with their lives as if the whole thing had never happened.

"Melodiously. Does he have a good voice? Can he carry a tune?"

Ruthie looked blankly at him, hoping he would let her in on the reasoning behind this grandstanding. Michael shot her an exasperated half-glance that clearly communicated that she wasn't performing very well. "Perhaps Captain Calavicci would favor us with a sample of his singing?"

Ruthie stared. Was this some kind of joke? Al's attorney was staring too. Al, however, got languidly to his feet. "With pleasure," he said with a sardonic nod of acknowledgement.

"Don't be ridiculous," his rather podgy lawyer said. "Sit d—"

"Aw, lighten up!" Al jibbed. "If you can't trust your wife's divorce attorney, who can you trust?" He turned to Michael. "What'll it be, dear brother?"

"Why don't we try '_Volare_', that being your hit single?" Michael suggested smoothly.

Al grinned. "Certainly," he said. He placed his right hand over his heart and cast his eyes skyward as reverently as if he was about to declaim the Pledge of Allegiance. A moment later his gravelly, slightly off-key voice filled the courtroom. "_Volare_," he sang; "_oh-oh. Contare, oh-oh-oh-oh. Nel blu depinto de blu, felice—"_

Ruthie had to wipe the fond smile from her lips. She loved the way Al sang, and it was a shame she had to pretend otherwise. She had thrown out the lie as a desperate defense, but Michael just wasn't letting it go.

Al got as far as "_ed ancora piu su_" before the judge rapped his gavel on the bench.

"Enough, thank you," he said. "I think I've seen enough of Captain Calavicci's musical talents."

Al made a very extravagant bow. The judge narrowed his eyes at Michael.

"What I'm _not_ seeing, counselor, is your point," he said.

"Nor do I!" Al's attorney added firmly. Al winked at Ruthie as he resumed his seat. Was even this a joke to him?

"If you will bear with me, I'm coming to that," Michael said. "Ruthie, how many times per week, on average, would you say Captain Calavicci woke you up with his—uh—_singing_?"

"Take the total number of incidents and divide by fourteen," Al suggested blithely. "Thirteen if you don't count the honeymoon—Micky? Should she count the honeymoon?"

The judge thumped the desk again. "Captain, you are out of order. Mike, if you don't show me pretty quick what all this has to do with your case…"

Michael nodded. "I'm almost there, your honor. Now, Ruthie, just a rough estimate. How many times per week?"

"Al woke me up about five nights a week," Ruthie said softly.

"Five nights a week? Did he ever wake you up more than once in the same night?"

Al had a look of vague horror on his face. He clearly hadn't realized what a disturbance he had been.

"Sometimes," Ruthie whispered.

"I'm sorry, Ruthie, I'm not sure everybody heard that," Michael said.

"I said yes, sometimes," Ruthie repeated, a little louder.

"Sometimes!" Michael echoed triumphantly. "Five nights a week, sometimes more than once in the same night—is it any wonder the poor woman needed a prescription in order to cope?"

"Your honor, this so-called abuse is completely outside of Captain Calavicci's control!" Al's counsel exclaimed. "Even assuming Mrs. Calavicci made him aware of his nocturnal serenades, what is the man supposed to do? Should he sleep with a gag in his mouth on the off chance that he may start singing?"

A sudden motion brought Ruthie's eyes to Al, who was touching his fingertips to the corners of his mouth with a haunted expression in his eyes.

"The emotional abuse to which Mrs. Calavicci—Ruthie—has been subjected is not exclusively nocturnal!" Michael asserted. "There has also been a chronic and very disturbing lack of communication on the part of Captain Calavicci. For instance, Ruthie, did you even know that your so-called husband has been married twice before?"

"Yes," Ruthie said, coloring a little. Her eye met Nai's. Her older sister was jiggling Sarah against her shoulder and smiling encouragingly.

"Oh." The response caught Michael off guard. "Well… when did he tell you this?"

"Before we were married—New Year's Eve, I think? Not long after we met," Ruthie said.

"I see…" Michael was uncomfortable but hiding it well. "Did he tell you the situation that led to each breakup?"

"Your honor, this isn't a trial. Why is my esteemed colleague harping on the Captain's previous marriages as if they are past offences?" the other lawyer asked.

"Your honor, you have before you a list of the stipulations of Captain Calavicci's divorce from his second wife. I would like to draw your attention to the heavy penalties imposed on the Captain by the civil court of Florida at that time. Even four years after the fact, he is paying out eight hundred and fifty dollars a month to the poor woman—"

"I would like to point out that this 'poor woman' receives her cheque faithfully every month, and has had no cause to complain to the authorities about Captain Calavicci's diligence or deportment since the divorce," Al's attorney piped up.

"The operative phrase being _since the divorce_," Michael said acerbically. "If you look at the record of the testimony from the proceedings you'll note complaints of neglect, evasive behavior, and the same pathological lack of communication to which Ruthie has been subjected."

"That's all very well, Mike, but what about the Captain's first marriage?" the judge asked.

"His first wife was also a Naval officer, and the split was engineered through military channels. I was unable to gain access to the files. Would you care to enlighten us as to the details, Captain?" Mike asked.

"Like hell," Al spat, his voice suddenly coarse and strained.

"Hmm." Michael turned back tot he bar. "Your honor, I would like to suggest that it is not unlikely that Captain Calavicci is responsible for the collapse of that marriage, too, doubtlessly due to his irresponsibility, his secretive and evasive behaviour, and his selfish and obstinate refusal to be honest with his wives!"

Ruthie looked at Al again. His lips were white and pressed together as if he was about to be ill, and his eyes were closed. Something Michael was saying was striking painfully close to home.

"Here's another example. Ruthie, you're a peace activist, are you not?" Michael asked pleasantly.

"I was," Ruthie answered. "I'm not very active anymore."

"Well, no, of course not," allowed Michael. "I mean, the war has been over for seven years now, but when you were in college you were very involved in the movement to end the violence in Vietnam."

"Yes."

"In fact, your whole family is almost radically pacifist."

If Ruthie hadn't known better she would have thought that she was the one Michael was trying to trap. "Yes," she said proudly.

"When did Captain Calavicci deign to tell you he had served in the war to which you were so vehemently opposed?"

"He didn't," Ruthie said. "I asked him."

"You had to ask him. And how long had you been married before you became suspicious enough to ask?"

"Two months," Ruthie said softly, trying not to look at Al.

"You had been married _two months_ before you found out he fought in Vietnam?"

Ruthie nodded.

"Your honor, please!" the other lawyer exclaimed. "Mrs. Calavicci had to be aware of the Captain's occupation before she married him. If she was so naïve as to suppose that a career military man, a skilled pilot and a decorated officer, was _not_ called upon to serve his country in a conflict that necessitated the drafting of civilians to—"

"A _war_!" Michael corrected. "A bloody, unjust war that did more harm than good."

"We are not here to debate the morality of the Vietnam War," The judge said. "Mike, would you please get to the point?"

"With pleasure," Michael said. "Now, Ruthie," he said, moving back to the plaintiff's table; "to what length has Captain Calavicci discussed his war record with you?"

"We've never discussed it," Ruthie said, glancing at Al, who was now glowering blackly at Michael.

"What, never?"

"_No, never_," Al sang, rolling his eyes heavenwards. It was Ruthie's turn to glare. Didn't he ever take anything seriously?

"So you admit it, Captain!" Michael said keenly. Al gave him a sugary, unctuous smile.

"Has it ever occurred to you that Ruthie and I might have decided to focus on our common ground instead of our differences?" he asked with counterfeit pleasantry.

"Captain, you will get your turn to speak," the judge admonished. "Counsel will direct all questions to the individual on the stand."

"Certainly, your honor," Michael said. As he went on, he started to rummage in his briefcase. "Now, I'm sure you'll agree with me that honesty is the foundation of a healthy relationship. Ruthie, have you been honest with Captain Calavicci?"

"I… I think so," Ruthie said.

"And has he been honest with you?" Michael asked, pulling something out of his briefcase and approaching the stand. "Wait, don't answer me yet. I want you to read this article, _and then you tell me if Captain Calavicci has been honest with you_!"

He thrust a magazine into her hands. It was a copy of Time from 1973. Ruthie remembered the article he had it opened to: it dealt with the repatriation of the American prisoners of war after the conditional peace between the US and Vietnam. She skimmed through the first page with its mood-establishing rhetoric. On the second page her eye was drawn immediately to the bottom outside corner by a familiar grin.

Her hands began to shake. There, wounded and filthy and almost naked, was Al. Her eyes ran over his skeletal frame, the twisted ribs, the grotesquely angled collarbone. His hair was long and matted, his hands and feet were shackled with heavy iron. The dark, bloody welts on his bare chest sketched familiar lines in his skin. And still he was smiling.

This, she realized abruptly, was what he had the nightmares about. This was what woke him, screaming, in the middle of the night. He had been a prisoner in Vietnam—not bombing villages or dropping napalm after all, but suffering God only knew what agonies and indignities. The memory of his scarred back flashed unbidden through her mind. Every one of those marks had been raw and new once. Now she understood what her father had tried to tell her. _Just like your mother_, Papa had called her. And Mama, telling about that repercussions of her own husband's captivity… How had her parents found out? They must have recognized Al from this magazine. Why—_why_ hadn't they told her?

The first tear rolled down her nose and splashed onto Al's bruised black-and-white face. Before she knew what she was doing Ruthie was sobbing uncontrollably, overcome with horror and pity and denial as her bubble of innocence burst.


	27. Chapter TwentySeven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Al bent low over the sink in the men's room, scrubbing his face with cold water and shivering violently with torment and rage. Damn it, that had been a low blow. Not bad enough to dress Ruthie like a doll and address her by her diminutive as if she was a poor, poor sweet little girl victimized by a domineering old man who really should have known better. No, the ambulance-chasing bastard had had to drag out that goddamned magazine.

There was no invention in the history of civilization with as much potential for abuse as the camera. It was an instrument of humiliation and torture that the Viet Cong could have learned a few valuable lessons from. Things you wished to God you could forget immortalized in graphic color for war crimes files and medical records, instants of naïve optimism captured forever so that you could relive the moment of disillusionment over and over again. Just his luck to be rescued by a squadron with an ensign who was an amateur photographer. He had let the kid—enthusiastic and wet behind the ears and part of a world he'd been pining for for six wretched years—take his picture, ignorant of just how truly hideous he looked. The smile had only been about ten percent irony and good humor. The rest had been genuine: thoughts of a bath and decent food and aspirin and the passionate reunion with Beth.

It was the brief moment of joy separating the physical torture from the emotional, and he wished he could forget that he had ever felt so optimistic. The higher you fly, the farther you fall, and the picture was a constant reminder of that.

He supposed he should thank God he hadn't shown up until after the war. The men who had had the misfortune to be so feature, either before or after capture, had become propaganda targets, subjected to atrocities in the hope that they would break and become puppets of the Viet Cong. Although Al had undergone some of the most horrific torture that the enemy had dished out, he'd never been set in front of a camera, broken and defeated, with a prepared statement in his numb hands, facing the choice between treason and torment that his mind and body could no longer bear.

Of course, if he _had_ been one of those he might never have been given to Major Quon. He might have spent the war in a proper camp instead of being dragged off into the jungle as a status symbol and a toy. Things were bad at Hoa Lo, those first months after capture, and miserable during '68 when he had subsisted in true Third World squalor at Briarpatch, but there had been hundreds of men in those camps, all in the same boat. By all accounts, too, the conditions had improved and the torture abated after the death of Ho Chi Minh. Not so in Major Quon's outposts in the jungles around Cam Hoi. The wretched MIAs unfortunate enough to fall into his clutches had been starved and deprived and tortured relentlessly for the duration. Especially the wisecracking, obdurate Italian ones. The memory of the tiger cage made Al's back ache instantly, even though he had been home and upright for seven years.

Equally, the thought of how close he had come to being left behind haunted him. North Vietnam had sworn until they were blue in the face that the last American prisoners were sent home on March 29, 1973. The same day one of Quon's cronies had betrayed his commander's trust and reported two forgotten wretches still detained far from Hanoi, a pair of Missing in Action pilots whom everyone back home were sure were dead (too sure, Al thought bitterly; way too sure). One was an Army captain named Robert White. The other was Naval Lieutenant Albert Calavicci. Everyone at the top had forgotten the gifts of flesh given to the one-eyed hero of Ap Bac. Bobby and Al had come _this close_ to being left behind. Since their repatriation not a single American had been found alive over there. They were the last.

Bobby had made light of it. Every newspaper scab from San Diego to Boston had quoted his quip that "they just plain forgot about us". Al, on the other hand, still had nightmares about that possibility, morbid fantasies in which Titi and Scabs frogmarched him off into the jungle where he would never be found. He could hear them telling Bobby he was dead—killed trying to escape or spirited away by malaria or something. He could see endless years of torment, the war over and nobody even trying to find him. He wondered, sometimes, how many _had_ been left behind, alive but alone, with no hope left.

The cold water was dissipating the demons of the past, but the image of Ruthie's face when she'd turned that page lingered. The poor kid had had no idea about his captivity until that minute. He knew it wasn't the associations that bothered her: she wasn't haunted by the memory of the ignorant and soon-to-be shattered hope behind the cocky smile. She was simply assaulted by the physical atrocities, but even that was more punishment than she deserved. It was a horrible photograph—not the worst, but plenty bad enough. She had sounds to draw on, too, if he was right in his guess that most of those awakenings had been thanks to his nightmares, not "_Volare_" at all. Under her tough matriarchal attitude Ruthie had a very soft heart. She hated to see other people suffering—probably because she had suffered so much herself. God, the poor, poor kid. No wonder she had broken down like that….

"Captain? What on _earth_?"

Al turned his head to see his attorney by the door, staring at him in mild astonishment and horror. Al looked at his suit jacket, shirt and tie, all of which were thrown over a stall partition. Then he glanced at his damp, red-faced, tousle-haired and undershirt-clad reflection. An interesting sight—probably not the kind of client one hoped for.

"Can I help you?" Al asked, as casually as he could.

"We need to get back in there in seven minutes!" the lawyer said anxiously. "Put your clothes back on and hurry up!"

"Settle down," Al said, drying his face on the roller towel and moving to collect his shirt.

"Settle down? Do you realize what's happening? Do you have any idea how this is making you look?"

"It's my money on the line, not yours," Al said, his fingers working deftly over his buttons. "You get paid win or lose, so do me a favor and take a deep breath."

"Captain Calavicci—"

"In through the nose, out through the mouth," Al coached. "Come on, just try it. It isn't as hard as it sounds."

"I warned you your wife's attorney wasn't going to pull his punches! Now will you _please_ let me tell them about your wife's bipolar elective disorder?"

"_No_," Al said, not even bothering to correct the fool as he straightened his tie and slid into his jacket. "If you so much as insinuate it, you'll wish you'd never been born."

"After what her lawyer just did to you—"

"And how do you think that felt?" Al growled, more genuine emotion leaking into the words than he would have liked. "You're not doing that to Ruthie!"

"She did it to y—"

"No, she didn't, her attorney did. And just because Ruthie can't control her counsel, don't think I can't control mine. You've been warned." He opened the bathroom door and beckoned condescendingly. "C'mon, sonny. Recess is over."

Glowering, the attorney followed him.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

"I didn't know," Ruthie told Sarah, jiggling the baby as she paced the length of a little chamber off the courtroom. "He didn't tell me."

Ninety minutes was more than enough time to school the features and stem the tide of tears, but every time Ruthie closed her eyes she could see that horrible photograph. Why hadn't Al told her? Why hadn't _somebody_ told her?

She tried to ask herself honestly if it would have made any difference, but all she could come up with was that it should have. If she had known what he was dealing with she should have been more patient with him. How had Papa put it? Something about a broken clock.

Ruthie felt an irrational pang of anger. Papa had known. He had known Al had been a prisoner of war, but he had spoken in riddles, insinuating vaguely but not ever bothering to be anything like direct. And Al. Why the hell hadn't Al told her? Didn't he know they had tried to hasten the end of the war as much for the captive and dying American soldiers as they had for the impoverished and unjustly afflicted Vietnamese people? Did he honestly think she was so blinded by rhetoric that she thought the States had been the sole perpetrator of atrocities over there?

If she had been honest, she might have admitted that once upon a time she _had_ felt that way. Like the rest of her friends she had wanted to believe that the "peace-loving Vietnamese" had treated American prisoners humanely. The revelations of '69 and '70 had been hard to accept. Repatriation photographs like the ones in that damned magazine had finally made the truth too blatant to ignore.

She should have known, she realized. She should have remembered. She had known from the minute she met Al that he looked familiar, but she had deluded herself into thinking that it was because of his moon mission—as if she had ever given more than a cursory glance at any press to do with NASA. The photo in Time… it was a powerful image, not in the least because of the juxtaposition of the battered body, the broken bones, and the hideous irons with the radiant, joyous smile.

How could he be smiling? After surviving something like that, for how long she had no idea, how had Al even been able to find a smile? Suddenly the constant buoyancy that she had so loathed during the painful swing down into the depths of depression did not seem so ridiculous and frustrating. It was admirable. Amazing. It was nothing short of a miracle.

"Ruthie?" Naomi had returned from her trip to the restroom. Ruthie turned and looked at her, finally trusting herself to speak.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded. "Why didn't anybody bother to tell me?"

Naomi looked miserable. There was no further call for a big sister's embrace. Now Ruthie wanted an explanation, and that was the most difficult thing to render.

"Michael asked me not to," she said lamely. "And I… I hoped Al had told you. I wanted to believe he would."

"Well, he didn't," Ruthie said bitterly. "And neither did anybody else—not even my sister."

"Ruthie, I…" Nai shook her head. "We only want what's best for you. You shouldn't have to live like this."

Like what? Naomi didn't seriously still believe that Al beat her, did she? Ruthie realized with despair that those bruises she had incurred in the desperate struggle over her life told a story that couldn't be adequately kyboshed without disclosing truths far more hideous than Al's. Unless she explained why Al had had occasion to grab her like that, Naomi was never going to believe it had been in her best interest to acquire those little injuries.

The truth hovered for the briefest second on her lips, before retreating back into the vault that had hidden it since the earliest days of high school. She wanted her life to go back to normal, and it couldn't do that if her family knew her secret.

"Great," she said, her voice flat. "Thanks. I'm so glad you're looking out for my interests. Maybe next time you'll think about my feelings, too?"

Naomi flinched as if she had been slapped. The accusation was a fair one.

Sarah started fussing and Ruthie tried to quiet her. It didn't work: the baby was determined to cry.

"She's hungry," Nai whispered, putting out her hands for her daughter. Ruthie yielded the child without argument, and strode past her sister towards the courtroom.

She wondered fleetingly if there was a way to call the whole thing off. She hadn't been fair to Al. If only she had known, she would have tried harder. She hoped she would have tried harder.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

Ruthie was already seated when Al came back into the courtroom. He tried to catch her eye, but she was staring at her hands, even ignoring Michael, who was murmuring inaudibly in her ear. Behind her Naomi had a receiving blanket draped over her shoulder and her arm, obviously nursing the baby.

The judge came in and proceedings were officially resumed. Michael cleared his throat and rose. Al fidgeted for a second, impulse and sanity warring within him. Then he bounced to his feet. "I've got something to say!" he announced.

"So do I!" Ruthie cried, leaving her seat. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she froze, looking properly horrified at her own boldness.

"Go ahead," Al said graciously, inwardly amused by the dumbfounded looks both lawyers were wearing.

"N-no, you first," said Ruthie, timidly. Whatever resolve had got her onto her feet was faltering.

"All right," Al agreed. "What I wanted to say is I'm shipping out to Arizona in a little over a week, and I don't have the time to waste on a long, ugly court battle. Obviously somebody wants to play dirty, but I'm not interested. Whatever you want, it's yours. You can have it: I don't care."

"You don't _care_?" Ruthie parroted, hurt and confusion evident in her eyes.

Of course he cared, but he also knew that the feeling was temporary. Women came and went, and Ruthie was on the way out. That was all there was to it. He would get over it, just like he'd gotten over all the others. Almost all the others. In a couple months his only regret would be that he had married her, because breakups were more expensive that way. At least, that was just what he had to keep telling himself.

He covered up his pang of sentimentality entirely with a roguish grin. "Why should I care?" he asked. "It's obvious you've thought this through very carefully and I trust your judgment. Even an idiot," he said, casting a pointed look at Naomi's meddling husband; "can see it wasn't working out. Let's just make this quick and painless. What do you want? You can have it."

"Captain, that isn't—"

"Shut up," Al said pleasantry, not even bothering to look at his lawyer. "I'm speaking to Mrs. Calavicci."

"I… I…" Ruthie blinked at him, clearly disarmed. "I don't want anything," she said abruptly.

Michael interjected. "Ruth, what the hell are you—"

"Shut up," Ruthie told him. "I'm speaking to Captain Calavicci.

Al's lips twitched at her mimicry, but he was too preoccupied to react as he might have. "What did you say?"

"I don't want your money," Ruthie repeated. "I just want to move on, too. I want it to be like this marriage never happened.

He couldn't say why, but that hurt. So he broadened his smile. "That's ridiculous," he said. "Of course you want money. How else are you going to pay off that jerk?" He jabbed his thumb in Michael's direction.

The lawyer bristled. "Ruth is my wife's little sister," he said. "I wouldn't charge her for my help getting her away from a selfish, deceptive, abusive—"

"_Allegedly_ abusive!" Al's lawyer cried.

The judge brought down his gavel. "Counsel will refrain from bickering," he said. "Let them talk about it."

"Thanks, your worship," Al said irreverently. He took a step towards the plaintiff. "Ruthie, be reasonable. You want money. Just tell me how much."

Ruthie shook her head. "I don't want anything," she reiterated.

"Well, let's pretend that you do, and these two bloodsuckers can duke it out for the amount," Al said imperiously. He clapped his hands and waved one index finger at each lawyer, like twin conductor's batons. "Well, get to it! What are we paying you for? Peck each other's eyes out!"

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

In the end they decided on a lump settlement in lieu of sustained alimony payments. The sum finally reached was large enough that Al's pocketbook was going to be hurting for a while, but Ruthie had to get something and he was well aware that he had got off easy. If Michael hadn't started getting so emotionally involved and alienated the judge that stunt with the Time magazine might have been the final nail in his coffin. As it was the charges of abuse hadn't seemed to factor into the final ruling. He decided that even though he wasn't required to pay alimony he'd still send Ruthie a couple hundred bucks now and then. If she really didn't want it she could tear up the cheques. It'd be nice to have an excuse to stay in touch.

As he left the courtroom, having waited long enough that Ruthie and her entourage should have been long gone, a hiss from an alcove just off the corridor stopped him in his tracks. He turned to see his now officially ex-wife standing in the corner, beckoning to him. Confused but curious, Al stepped into the alcove.

Her eyes wandered over his face and his body, somehow evading his eyes. "Al…" she said painfully. He knew what she was thinking.

His hand moved to grip her shoulder, but fell back impotently. She wasn't his wife anymore, he reminded himself. The indissoluble union before her God and her community had just been neatly dissolved.

"Ruthie," he said wearily; "I want you to know that it's nothing personal. It isn't because I don't trust you. I just knew if I told you you'd start asking questions."

Her eyes met his. They were wide and liquid and full of unshed tears. "They tortured you," she breathed.

Al shrugged and put on a wooden smile. "They tortured everyone," he said. "I'm one of the lucky ones. I came home."

"I'm gl—" She stopped and colored deeply. Al wondered what she had been about to say.

The familiar silence rushed between them like an impassable river. After a minute or more Ruthie started fumbling with the clasp on her purse. She drew out a little box and pressed it into Al's hand.

"Happy birthday," she said, pecking him quickly on the cheek.

Bewildered and yet strangely gratified, Al opened the box. It held a pair of large silver cufflinks, with tiny topazes forming a yellow rose on each stud.

"I bought them last month," Ruthie explained hastily. She let loose a nervous laugh. "I don't know anybody else who would wear them."

"They're fabulous," Al said, digging in his own pocket. "As a matter of fact I was going to give these back, but with that little bit of melodrama your brother-in-law pulled it slipped my mind." He brought out the sapphire earrings. "You left them behind," he said simply.

Ruthie shifted uncomfortably. "It didn't seemed appropriate to take them," she hedged.

"Well, I want you to," Al said. "C'mere."

He brushed her soft wings of hair out of the way and slipped one hook into each ear. The sapphires glittered. He nodded in satisfaction. "They suit you," he said.

She smiled radiantly, and for a second he thought they were going to wind up in a passionate embrace.

Then Ruthie smoothed her hair and shifted from one foot to the other, uneasy once again. "I'd better get going," she said. "Naomi will wonder where I am."

"So long," Al said with a mask of a smile.

Ruthie hurried off, and he watched her go. He'd miss her, he reflected, but that would pass. There were plenty more apples in the barrel and he was off to Arizona. He could find himself a desert princess or a cute little _chiquita_ in no time. He'd buy himself a little trailer—he'd rather have a house, but it would take all of a year to scrape together a down payment now, and he wanted some freedom, not Naval lodgings on a top-secret government base. And a dog. He'd always wanted a dog, and out in Arizona there'd be plenty of space. Yeah, as soon as he was settled he'd get himself a great big dog: a collie or a Rottweiler or a Labrador retriever. Then he'd find something soft and sweet to cuddle. Maybe that Doctor Eleese was single and looking…

He smirked. The original Ice Queen was probably single, all right, but the man who melted her heart would have to be a miracle-worker. Still, it couldn't hurt to try. It was a challenge worthy of a master of romance.

He strode out into the sunlight and made his way to the Corvette, shoulders squared and stance confident. The divorce was a setback, but he couldn't let it lick him. After all, he was Albert Calavicci, Captain in the United States Navy, Administrator-Elect of Starbright Project, God's gift to women, nocturnal troubadour, and disco dancer extraordinaire. He was forty-six and the world was his oyster.

The situation called for a celebratory scotch.


	28. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

September in New York was a season unto itself. The air was crisp and still pleasantly warm. The trees were just starting to turn, and the whole city seemed to glow with a golden light.

Ruthie had taken the train up from Jersey that morning. She had sat through a three-hour seminar hosted by Random House in association with Columbia University, then eaten lunch with a school chum now employed at Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. The afternoon was her own to do with as she pleased, and she had opted to go shopping.

The difference between the Ruth Zelnik now strolling down Fifth Avenue and the Ruthie Calavicci who had been brought under protest to Trenton Psychiatric four months ago could not have been more pronounced. She was confident again, contented and back in control. She took Aurorix now with every meal, and lithium still in the morning and at bedtime. She had her own apartment. Her boss had been overjoyed to learn she wanted her job back: apparently editors with her precision and naturally obsessive, meticulous nature were hard to find. Her life was back to normal, and the five months she had known Al Calavicci were already starting to fade into a detached and not entirely unpleasant memory.

Sometimes she missed him: when the kids were around, particularly the boys; when she made some dish he had loved; when she brushed her hair; and especially during those hours between eleven and one—twenty-three- and oh-one-hundred—when they had been wont to make love during the brief days of romance and post-nuptial fantasy. On the whole, though, the truth was that they were both happier apart. She was content again, and Al? He was off in Arizona, working on his top-secret research project and probably right back on the dating scene.

It was funny, then, how much the man in the electric blue zoot suit just bouncing out of the coffee shop on the next corner looked like him.

All of a sudden limber arms had her around the waist, spinning her around with no regard for the parcel of books in her arms or the satchel slapping against her hip. A familiar laugh rang out and a suave gravel voice said, "Hey, beautiful."

Ruthie laughed, too, because there was really no other adequate response. "Al!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here? I thought you were in Arizona!"

"I am," he said, slipping the satchel from her shoulder to his and relieving her of her purchase. He curled his free arm about her shoulders and fell into step beside her. "But I came up here for the week to grease the palms of the politically essential. How have you been?"

"Fine," she said with conviction. "I'm happy."

"_Good_." Al sounded vehemently earnest. "You deserve to be happy. What brings you to Calavicci's old stomping ground?'

"Came for business, stayed for pleasure," Ruthie said, falling under his spell as surely as she had on Christmas night.

"Well, you've found it!" he quipped, leaning in to smell her hair. "You have plans, or can you while away an afternoon with an old flame?"

"I was doing a little shopping," said Ruthie.

"I don't mind shopping if I've got good company," Al told her. "What are you after?"

"I need a new pair of black heels."

He considered this. "You're right," he said. "You do."

She laughed again. Only Al would bother to remember the state of a wardrobe belonging to a woman he was no longer married to.

He leaned closer and whispered teasingly in her ear, "After that you could go and look for some new lingerie."

Ruthie clapped a hand over her mouth, giggling in embarrassed amusement. The thought that maybe she had forgotten to take her lithium this morning fleeted through her mind, but no, she remembered cradling all three pills in her hand as she poured orange juice to wash them down. Then it occurred to her that she was just happy—not manic, but actually _happy_. And why not? Al had said, just now, that she deserved to be happy. She smiled and shook her head.

"I'll bet you say that to all the girls," she demurred.

"Only the beautiful Jewish editor girls," Al replied, his casual hold morphing into a fond hug. "Shoes, hmm?" he said. "Let's see what we can do."

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

They spent the whole afternoon together, wandering Manhattan like two old friends. Al was delighted to learn that Rachel was safely delivered of a beautiful, healthy baby girl by the name of Clarissa, and even bought a beautiful cotton romper suit for Ruthie to pass on. When the sun set he led her to a tiny Italian restaurant near the docks. Ruthie was surprised at the charm and class hidden by the dingy old storefront. The owner was a stunning middle-aged woman who was an old friend of Al's. Ruthie's sense of propriety did not permit her to ask if they had been in the orphanage together, but they were obviously close: she treated the pair of them like royalty. Ruthie had never much cared for Italian food before meeting Al, and she was surprised at how delicious everything was.

Afterwards they walked down Broadway. All the shows were in and the street was saturated with strange and vaguely unsavory characters. It might have been a frightening experience, but Ruthie wasn't afraid in the company of such a survivor. She had said nothing to Al all day about Vietnam, and she didn't intend to. As much as she wanted to know—and the research she had done since the divorce had only raised more questions—she had been enjoying the day far too much to drive a wedge between them.

Suddenly Al stopped and bent to kiss the crook of her neck. "Do you have to work tomorrow?" he asked, his voice low and velvety.

Ruthie shook her head. "The book business rests on the Sabbath," she said dreamily.

Al kissed her again, lingering longer this time. "Would you like to spend the night?" he whispered.

"Where?" she breathed.

"Here." He gestures at the building he had halted before. Ruthie stared up at it in wonder.

"It's the same hotel," she said.

Al shrugged. "Sure," he said, his voice equilibrating back to casual. "I always stay here when I'm in New York. The concierge and I? Oh, we go way back."

"The beautiful female concierge?" Ruthie asked, teasing. It was amazing how amusing Al's way with the ladies was now that they were no longer man and wife.

"What? Oh, naw. Gabe Mahlman. My old sparring partner," Al explained.

"Sparring partner?" Ruthie could not help confirming this assertion.

Al swaggered a little. "Miss Zelnik," he said; "you are looking at the local Golden Gloves regional champ of 1950."

Ruthie could not stifle the giggle. "You were a boxer?" she asked skeptically.

Al put up his fists and began to dance, throwing a couple of admittedly practiced shadow-punches. "And I was good, too—pop! Pop!" Then he relaxed and laughed as well, throwing a companionable arm around her shoulders. "So how 'bout it, _cara mia_?" he asked. "You want to spend the night?"

She curled her hand around his chest and leaned her head towards his shoulder. "I'd like that," she said.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

It was even the same room he had brought her to on Christmas night—not surprising, if indeed he was a regular guest. Soon they were on the bed, and Al was reminding her what a kiss was supposed to be like. This time when he reached for her zipper she slid off his suspenders, and suddenly they were making love amid the soft sheets. They fell asleep curled around each other, Al's face buried in Ruthie's long, dark hair.

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

Ruthie wasn't certain what woke her—the sunlight on her back or the voice in her ear.

"_Volare_," it sang, drowsily and off-key; "_oh-oh. Contare, oh—_"

Ruthie kissed the serenading lips. "Al, wake up," she murmured.

He sighed and opened his eyes. "Ruthie…" he said, yawning. "Is it morning?"

She nodded. His hand ran up her back.

"How 'bout breakfast in bed?" he asked.

"I've got a better idea," Ruthie said, slipping out of his arms and starting to collect and don her clothing. "Why don't you drive me home, and I cook you breakfast?"

"Now there's an offer I can't refuse," Al said, sitting up and pawing at his hair. "Of course," he amended thoughtfully; "I'll have to steal a car…"

"Al!" Ruthie cried. She didn't really think he'd do it… _probably_.

He batted his eyelashes, which gave him the look of a not-quite-trustworthy cherub. Then he smirked. "Relax, Ruthie. I'll borrow Gabe's car."

_MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWM_

The drive back to Jersey City in the borrowed Volkswagen passed quickly—too quickly. Almost before Ruthie realized it they were pulling up in front of her building. Al flew around the car to open the door for her, and she recovered her parcels from the back seat. Al smiled.

"Time to say goodbye," he said.

"What about breakfast?" asked Ruthie.

Al shook his head. "No time," he said. "I have a lunch date with some Ivy League heavyweights. The top-secret projects business _doesn't_ rest on the Sabbath."

"But—" Ruthie stopped herself. Better not to make a scene. After all, they weren't married anymore. Focus on the good things, Doctor Tamblyn liked to say. "Last night was great," she said. "I guess that's what we should have done nine months ago, huh? A nice little one-night stand."

"And miss out on all the experiences?" Al said. "Never! Besides, this way we know it never would have worked out."

Tears threatened to sting in Ruthie's eyes. What if it could have? What if it wasn't too late?

"I agree last night was great," Al went on. "Write me a letter once in a while, okay?"

Ruthie's throat was constricting. "You're quite a guy, Al," she said.

He grinned impishly. "Go on, tell me I'm a _mensch_," he said.

He was. He was a great guy. A real _mensch_. But Ruthie was scared she would start crying if she said it. So she tried a trick a certain Naval pilot loved to use. She tossed her head and scoffed merrily.

"You should be so lucky!" she said.

Al grinned and pecked her on the cheek. "Well, goodbye," he said.

There was a silence. The last silence.

"Al, last night…" Ruthie began. "I really am glad we got to…" Old habits stopped her. "You know, just one more time."

His smile was enormous. "So am I!" he said blithely.

Then he got into the car. At the stop sign on the corner he stuck his head out the window and looked back.

"Next year in Jerusalem!" he bellowed.

Ruthie's heart palpitated. She had forgotten how fascinated he had been with the Seder rituals.

"Next year, may all be free!" she shouted in answer.

He grinned, then ducked back into the car and vanished into the traffic.

Ruthie stood on the curb and watched him go. A guy like Albert Calavicci only came along once in a lifetime, she thought wistfully.

Then she grinned as she turned back towards her door.

That was a good thing because, really, once was enough.

FINIS


End file.
